They have astonishingly well-paid jobs that they don’t like. Some plan to stay only until their options are vested. Then they will move on to their “actual” careers. This population of the possessed waiting to be dispossessed spends an inordinate amount of time comparing the gourmet kitchens of different website headquarters. The top digital companies in the Bay Area are famed for putting on lavish buffets and encouraging employees to invite friends from rival firms to join the feasts. The company cafeteria has arguably become the preeminent battleground in local corporate bragging rights. For many young workers in the internet industry, San Francisco is a salaried vacation between college and their careers, a well-earned break before starting their adult lives. So what do they do with their free time during this purgatory? They eat.
And there are so many things San Franciscans don’t eat. Intolerance, in fact, is probably the strongest unifying force in the local food community. The gluten-free gospel has spread like wildfire across Northern California, attracting so many converts that even free-market capitalism has gone gluten-free… But gluten avoidance is just a gateway diet. A sensitivity to gluten slips into an irritation at eggs; egg-free turns to dairy-free; and soy-free inevitably becomes full-fledged veganism. The San Francisco psyche tends to codify personal preferences about ingredients into distinct self-identifying groups.
—Theodore Gioia writing in Virginia Quarterly Review about the food culture that has emerged in San Francisco, fueled by tech money, youth, a sense of transiency and free time, and built on the foundation of conscious-eating laid by people like Alice Waters.
from Longreads Blog » Longreads Blog http://blog.longreads.com/2015/08/18/eating-during-the-san-francisco-tech-boom/
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