Walking through A Southern Season brings back years of memories. Memories of hours spent with my father as he lifted the lid of each glass jar of coffee beans for my brothers and me to smell the richness; of long gleaming candy counters where truffles and rich chocolates I could only dream of tasting were at home with every flavor of jelly bean. We went there often when I was younger, but we didn’t buy a lot. Even in a stable economy, the prices were too high for my food-loving father. We went there when he wanted some particular item that the local Harris Teeter didn’t carry or when the wine rack was starting to look a bit empty.
It was a paradise for my brothers and for me, the children of food-loving parents. We always knew that if we ran the errands with our father he would most likely end up buying something for us. Yes, there was a food incentive to run errands, but that’s the whole point. The food there was out of this world, even for a ten year old hot dog lover.
My parents love good food, but they lack the resources eat “the best” all of the time. With three teenagers, two of them boys and a tight budget because of the economy, shopping at A Southern Season is no longer an option. My father had found other locations to purchase those specific products and ingredients that drew him to A Southern Season in the first place.
We cannot escape the lure of the gourmet food however. Some family friends are higher up on the economic ladder than we are and often eat food purchased at A Southern Season. It’s always a treat to eat at their houses because while the food purchased from the local Harris Teeter is decent quality food, there is something about that next higher level of quality that sets the meals apart. Now that my brothers are older and even more annoying, they constantly question my parents about why we don’t eat the way our family friends do. My parents spend the better part of the drives home from every dinner party explaining why what we eat normally differs so much from the meal we just enjoyed.
The gourmet food served at the homes of our family friends is to them the food bought at the local Harris Teeter and served in my home. The quality of the food served on a normal basis is a good indicator of the social-economic level of the family. Our family friends are in the upper portion of the middle class while my family is lower down in the middle class. Yes, we are both middle class families, so we shouldn’t differ too much. But we do. Different neighborhoods in different parts of town, and different quality levels of food served on a regular basis in each household. They consistently serve the higher quality, gourmet food in their house while the food consumed in my house is of a lower quality and bought from non-gourmet stores.
Through observations, those who shop at stores such as A Southern Season regularly, often have enough money to not mind the high prices. In some cases, the ability to shop at gourmet stores is the purchasing of a lifestyle. These people choose to shop at gourmet stores because they feel they elevate themselves social by showing off that they can shop there regularly. They are telling the rest of the world that they are too good to buy products form store which sell lower quality, but still very decent products. “Hey look at me. I have enough money to buy food here normally. I am better than you.” was generally the face I observed on those customers leaving A Southern Season with bags full of gourmet items.
In other cases, the people who shop at gourmet stores are simply those who thoroughly enjoy gourmet food and who have enough money to regularly buy gourmet products. In terms of social class, these are the people at the top of the ladder. Those who make enough money to do pretty much whatever they want, eat whatever they want, and shop wherever they want.
But what is gourmet food? The term gourmet is associated with fine or fancy food. Food that is called gourmet is classified in the food industry as high-quality premium food. Exotic foods for a certain region have been given the title of gourmet; foods that are rare in an area or foods that are of the highest quality and preparation. (Dictionary) Some food markets have even divided products between those of “standard” quality and those of “gourmet” quality. Gourmet food is the finest food available.
Gourmet vs. Non-Gourmet. At first glance there doesn’t seem to be too many differences between the stores. Both sell a wide variety of quality products, but on closer inspection, the similarities end there.
A Southern Season has sections described as the “best" of a specific region. The majority of the products cannot be found in any other local store. Even the lighting of the store places the food above everything else there, including the workers and chefs. At A Southern Season it is all about the food. The employees dress in black from head to toe and seem to vanish into the dark shadows cast by the lights. These lights are only directed at the towering shelves of food, or illuminating the rows of display cases, further leading to the conclusion that at A Southern Season, the food is what matters and nothing else.
The local Harris Teeter, on the other hand, prides itself on being very similar to a farmer’s market. The lights are directed so that everything is illuminated. The products are sold at lower prices, as mentioned earlier and the number of signs for sales and discounts is a bit overwhelming. There are also signs hanging and posted pretty much on every available square foot of the store, advertising ways the customer can eat as healthy as possible and for the promotion of the good of the general consumer. The shelves are lower and less easily lost in. At Harris Teeter, while they love being about the freshest products and the best deals, they also strongly believe in the welfare of their customers.
But what really sets the two stores apart is the level of quality of the food they sell. A Southern Season sells gourmet products while the local Harris Teeter sells lower quality, but still very decent products. The product at A Southern Season are sold in small amounts while at the Harris Teeter, you can get a much larger package for a lower price. A small bag of pasta, though brightly colored, is ten dollars at A Southern Season while at Harris Teeter a pound of pasta is on average two dollars. What is A Southern Season’s reasoning for their high price for a small amount of product? Their product is better, of higher quality; its gourmet, while the product at the Harris Teeter is not. It can only be inferred then that one of the difference between gourmet and non-gourmet foods is the price of the product.
Other differences between the two stores include the variety of products available for purchase and of course the general quality of the food. While A Southern Season is known as a specialty store, it does not carry specialty items in just one area, but multiple areas. So everything you could ever want from pasta to chocolate, from barbecue sauce to tea is available. Gourmet food is normally thought of as being sold in small quantities, but you would not think that walking into A Southern Season. It is an enormous warehouse of gourmet food. Shelves fill every available space, towering over my 5’11” body, stretching up to the ceiling. Yes the food is gourmet, and yes it is sold in small packages at high prices, but there are a ton of expensive small packages in A Southern Season.
Chapel Hill and surrounding areas are known throughout the states for being a center of gourmet food, but they are not an island of gourmet in a sea of southern style food as I previously thought. The two have blended producing gourmet southern food.
When most people think of southern food they normally don’t think of gourmet food in the same thought. But the two have been combined in A Southern Season. The very name of the store gives it away. A Southern Season, a gourmet store in the middle of the south, has combined the ideas of gourmet and southern cooking into one. There is an entire section of the store devoted to gourmet products and foods specifically from North Carolina and from the south. The wide variety of gourmet barbecue sauces speaks for itself. Gourmet southern food does exist, and let me tell you, it’s delicious.
Tall gleaming jars filled to the brim with more varieties of candy than I’ve ever seen before. An entire wall covered with dispensers full every flavor of jelly bean. The colors gleam out at me as I glance over the sugar free candy aisle and look towards the glass cases in which truffles, specialty chocolates and chocolate dipped candies lie perfectly next to each other, each one more extravagant and delicious looking than the last. This is a world vastly different from the single candy aisle in the local Harris Teeter. It’s a world were social status comes strongly into play; where the food is more important than anything else; where foodies from around the country flock; and where gourmet food is clearly defined.
<div style="width:480px;text-align:right;"><embed width="480" height="360" src="http://static.pbsrc.com/flash/rss_slideshow.swf" flashvars="rssFeed=http%3A%2F%2Ffeed1211.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fcc440%2Fchapelhilleats%2FFoodie%2520Chapel%2520Hill%2Ffeed.rss" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" /><a href="http://photobucket.com/redirect/album?showShareLB=1" target="_blank"><img src="http://pic.photobucket.com/share/icons/embed/btn_geturs.gif" style="border:none;" /></a><a href="http://s1211.photobucket.com/albums/cc440/chapelhilleats/Foodie%20Chapel%20Hill/" target="_blank"><img src="http://pic.photobucket.com/share/icons/embed/btn_viewall.gif" style="border:none;" /></a></div>
Works Cited
"Gourmet." Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 03 Apr. 2011. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Gourmet>.
No comments:
Post a Comment