The Gutter Gourmet! I recently wrote a blog about PagPag. If you have not heard of PagPag it is a Filipino word that literally means to โdust of the dirtโ, but in culinary terms means people that go around dumpsters, fetch food, essentially dust of the shit, and then sell it to other poor people in the slums. As youโd probably guess this is not done for fun, or choice, but is one of necessity. A necessity that even though pagpag can cause stuff as horrible as cholera it beats malnutrition.
I style myself as the Street Food Guy, and I know I have probably had dodgy oil during my time living in Asia, Iโve had the odd bad stomach, but whilst I do like to get down and dirty with the locals I feel lucky that I am not on an economic scale that would necessitate me needing to eat left-overs that could kill me.
But whilst I might have my faults, I feel that few would call me a hipster twat (although thereโs a lot you could call me).
Discovering the gutter gourmet
Ironically on a flight from Taipei to Manila (home of pagpag) I found myself reading an article on the Guardian online called โIโm the gutter gourmet: how I have spent a month eating other peopleโs leftoversโ. The article is written by someone called Andrew Meyers. I canโt work out from the article if he is a journalist, with the only things I can work out for sure is that he has a job, a father that seemed less of a twat than him, and that he is obviously king of the hipster twat people.
He spends the article talking about how he enjoys margarita pizza with cigarette ash on it, chicken chips from thrown in bushes from Arsenal fans (why did this massive cunt have to be a gooner), and about pretentious trips to high end parts of London to eat quinoa from dumpsters.
So, assuming you havenโt read his garbage, and assuming you are reading my verbal diarrhea, Iโll let you know the main summary of his article. Thereโs too much โstreet food wasteโ is supposed to be the message. OK that is a fair point, but not the drivel that follows.
The gentrification of poverty
He summarises with โits fun being the gutter gourmet. Perhaps word will get around the social media grapevine, and it will, with groups of bearded hipsters combing the sidewalks of Hoxton and Instagramming their putrid-palate pleasersโ.
Itโs hard to see if he is trying to be funny, or ironic with that ending, the ending of a shit article, that essentially is about there being nothing these urban elites wonโt try to gentrify. I mean seriously?
The reality of a “gutter gourmet”
I feel strongly about this because of the amunt of time I have spent in the Philippines. Here what Andrew Meyers calls “Gutter Gourmet” is a fact of life. I have already linked to my blog about pagpag food, but to summarize. People collect food from dumpsters “brush of the dirt” fry it and cook it. This is born through the necessity of poverty. Do people want to do this? No. Does it make people sick? Yes it does, which is what makes it all so very offensive.
In conclusion
Good job Andrew Meyers, youโve managed the gentrification of eating from dumpsters, and having managed a side bit of cultural appropriation (thatโs still a hipster buzz word right) from the people of Smoky Mountain in the Philippines.
Whilst I loathe to link to him you can read this steaming, obnoxious, pretentious pile of donkey wank here.