In the Inquisitive Eater’s inaugural special issue, our contributors take on a weighty theme: service. Our relationship to the food service industry can bear so many developmental milestones and societal interludes. This landscape is the scene of first jobs, second jobs, lifestyles, communities, addiction, direction, misdirection; it supports first dates and caffeine habits and those who’ve had the kind of day where making a meal for themselves seems an impossible task; it is a stage in which one can try to impress or be made to feel inferior, whether in back of house, front of house, or at the table.
Like so many creatives, the editors of Inquisitive Eater have worked in a number of service industry roles to help support our lives and aspirations. In this way, the artist’s life is often entangled with a life of service. It is a path that offers strange hours and new characters and hard work and wages that might pay the rent but never seem quite enough for financial unburdening. In service you establish inexplicable bonds with coworkers, and work double shifts in your dreams, and field an onslaught of human behavior that can elicit sentiments of endearment or disdain in an instant.
Mulling over service seems to be a growing part of the zeitgeist. Shows like The Bear have garnered a voracious fandom where the dysfunctions of restaurant operations have been romanticized despite its apt portrayal of physical and mental unrest; yes chef is thrown around in home kitchens and social media sketches as something humorous, something sexy. The proliferation of tipping prompts at checkout is eliciting a building ire from the American public that is pushing us to question the blurry guidelines of who we tip and how much. In many US cities, a staffing shortage of service industry jobs has lingered since the pandemic.
Societal roles which for so long got drowned out within the hum of daily life are vibrating at a frequency that demands attention.
The stories, poetics, and pressing questions of service are brought into conversation with one another in this Service Issue. Casey Adrian brings into focus how a passion for service and its rhythms can come at the cost of personal relationships. Sommelier Nikki Palladino breaks down the implications of an unapproachable wine list. Evan Kanouse’s piece explores service as a stabilizing force in the face of personal demons. Vanessa Ogle captures a melancholic monotony in her poem, and Marisol Aveline Delarosa tackles the slippery beast that is tipping culture.
We see this issue as the start of many more wonderful investigations to come: when it comes to the way we eat, the way we drink, there is a lot to unwrap. But for now, we welcome you to embrace the slowness and chaos of this holiday week with some tasty food writing. We hope you leave uncomfortably full.
Best,
Madison Ford, Brianna Lopez, and the editors of the Inquisitive Eater
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