While I have thought that the culture around chefs was a sign of decline, where we have a new middle class that only distinguishes itself through taste, and who use food as a proxy for their narcissism of small differences, this article still misses the mark. I do think cooking is craft and culture, and that entrepreneurship is heroic, and that some chefs really do earn respect for doing both, but there is a genre of restaurant that exists to flatter the conceits of the aforementioned sort of diners, (like critics who imagine they earn an honest living complaining about food), instead of providing an honest service. But the article is not about that.

The article problematizes the craftsmen and entrepreneurs as a vehicle for the same old conflict that the ideology of the authors is literally designed to manufacture. As a writer, the writing in this article, criticism free from the constraints of insight or art, says more about journalism than it does about chefs.