POV: It's 2024 and you're at a friend of a friend’s dinner party in TriBeCa. The host—a runner slash party girl slash home chef slash pilot, doctor, lawyer, and accidental influencer who has three degrees and extra hours in the day but never a pimple or a complaint—has arranged a spread that could have been styled by Sofia Coppola herself (or these days, more likely, Romilly Newman). 

Everything is “fancy” like a true “grown up party,” that even at nearly thirty, you don’t feel adult enough to be invited to. But it’s not because there are silver platters of caviar being passed around and bottles of 1945 Mouton Rothschild breathing in wait. Entirely the opposite actually. It all looks elevated, but really she's just procured a loaf of sourdough from the bakery that you can’t pronounce the name of around the corner and opened a few cans of tinned fish. There's a plate of artfully laid radis beurre and the crudités are cut to look like a work of art but at the end of the day, it’s still just chopped veg. 

(She slips into conversation that everything is straight from the farmers market because she makes it there by 8:30 every Sunday for her favorite designer butter and, of course, knows all the “guys.”)

What is it about her doing it that makes everything seem so chic and mature? Why do these vegetable batons feel like the height of luxury when you saw someone eating at Coqodaq on Instagram last week and thought it was tacky? 

Today we’re diving into what makes food a luxury status symbol and how that has changed since the time of white tablecloths and thousand dollar bottles of wine. What dishes, ingredients, and cooking and eating habits are “cool” and how food and the class system have been and always will be inextricably linked. 

ICYMI, my name’s Saanya Ali and I’m the founder of SOIRÉE, a platform, supper club, newsletter, and social community dedicated to reviving the “lost art of entertaining” and making food, and the culture around it, FUN…as it should be. Follow along on TikTok, and Instagram for more video deep dives!

History 101: The Great Food Status Shift

When did we collectively decide that paying $16 for 4 sardines on a plate at Le Dive was cooler than a steak at Peter Luger's?

It all comes down to the psychology of food status. Remember in middle school when all the cool girls went to Pinkberry after school and then all of a sudden, froyo became the cool thing to have? The same rules apply now, just with words like "artisanal," “home grown,” and "small-batch."

Scientists call this "social proof," and it's the same psychological mechanism that makes us wait 2 hours for Instagram croissants, suddenly care about olive oil terroir because TikTok told us to, convince ourselves that natural wine hangovers are "different,” and think $15 is reasonable for toast with a bit of ricotta.

If…the people we want to be like or accepted by are doing, buying, or eating something.

Then…the closest we can get is doing, buying, or eating that same thing.

This is nothing new. The evolution of food status symbols has told us everything about societal values throughout history—

1950s-60s: Convenience foods signaled modernity and prosperity, TV dinners meant you could afford a TV,  processed foods showed you were "with the times," and jello molds showed that you could afford a bit of whimsy and fun. 

1980s-90s: Excess and exotic ingredients reigned supreme. Fusion restaurants were the height of fashion and if a dish had truffle oil in it, it was fancy.

2000s-10s: All about molecular gastronomy and exclusivity. It was all “who do you know that can get me this impossible reservation” and tipping maître d’s. Celebrity chefs became popular and everything foamy or oddly shaped was cool and unique. 

Today: Everything is about authenticity and honesty. Transparency about ingredients and farming practices and a lot of heritage and story-driven consumption. We are value knowledge over price tag, really good stories over arbitrary Michelin stars, authenticity, and simplicity that’s done really well over complex molecular gastronomy.

The Rise of Euro-Core

The democratization of travel fundamentally changed how we approach food culture. That pasta-making class you took in Bologna, the wine tasting in Provence, or that tiny pintxos bar you discovered in San Sebastian—these experiences became the new markers of sophistication.

One big trend that’s popped up in the past few years is the specific obsession with everything European. The “French girl-approved” craze has been around for years, but this goes deeper. Everyone wants to be a Tuscan grandmother, a Danish teen, a French child, and a Spanish mom. Everyone wants to read analog books and write in cafes and wear linen and have perfectly wavy hair and eat three cardamom buns a day and face no consequence and somehow have time to make pasta from scratch.

What is Euro-Core?

• Tinned fish 

• Really good butter

• Artisanal bread

• Natural wine

• Preserved lemons

• Anchovy everything

• Expensive olive oil

• Fancy jarred vegetables

• Marcona almonds

• Radishes

• Tomatoes

It’s also:

• Slow living values

• Environmental consciousness

• Worldliness and cultural curiosity

• A rejection of excess

• Heritage, ancestry, and a prioritization of family

• Anti-processed foods

The knowledge economy

Ok, but if not white tablecloths and fancy wine, then what are the status symbols of the next generation going to be? What does the obsession with “Euro-core” look like in practice and what does it mean moving forward?

We are seeing a transition from excessive spending to excessive knowledge. Knowing information, practices, techniques, and people is becoming the height of cultural capital. No one person did more to elevate food knowledge over price than Anthony Bourdain. His legacy lives on in how we now value authenticity over presentation, cultural understanding over price point, and personal connections over exclusive reservations. He also emphasized knowledge of regenerative agriculture, relationships with small producers, and understanding of traditional techniques. 

Picture two dinner party hosts:

Host A: "This is a $400 bottle of wine."

Host B: "This natural wine is from a tiny female-owned vineyard in the Loire Valley. They still harvest by hand and follow biodynamic principles passed down for generations. The label art is actually by a local artist who..."

Who would you rather sit next to at dinner? Exactly.

Host B has a level of cultural capital that Host A isn’t displaying for three key reasons—they have a story to share that makes them an entertaining dinner companion, they are proving that they have the time and mental space to know where their wine is coming from, and they are a good person because they shopped in line with their values rather than just getting something showy and pricey. 

Back to the BASICS

The irony of it all is that after chugging relentlessly towards innovation, newness, and excess, the new luxury food landscape is, in many ways, a return to basics. We're paying premium prices for foods that were historically peasant fare—tinned fish, preserved vegetables, fermented goods. The luxury isn't in the ingredient itself but in the story, the sourcing, the tradition, and the knowledge required to appreciate it.

And no one does basics like the French. Julia Child said that "in France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport,” and while that may be true, the crux of what “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” means is perfecting the basics. 

For example, though Coq au Vin might sound posh when you see it on a menu with a $45 next to it, it literally translates to "old rooster in wine" and was a peasant stew that can make past their prime ingredients taste incredible with the implementation of proper technique. The same goes for a bouillabaisse which was initially a way for Marseille fishermen to make use of unsold fish bits and Ratatouille, a way to use up excess produce during a Provençal summer. French cuisine is all about elevating the mundane and infusing simplicity with technique. Quality basics trump complexity.

The French have taught the world that luxury isn't about expensive ingredients or complex preparations; it's about doing simple things perfectly and understanding why they matter. A perfectly ripe cheese served at exactly the right temperature, a basic vinaigrette made with precisely the right proportions, a simple radish served with good butter and salt—these are the true markers of sophistication.