Foie Gras Palates, Hot Dog Pocketbooks

“The donut wars,” several blogs and news organizations called them, as if a platoon of cinnamon crullers were advancing on a phalanx of glazed. The dispatches from the front were numerous — and impassioned. This was clearly a contest of the utmost consequence.

It pitted Tim Hortons, a Canadian doughnut leader, against Dunkin’ Donuts, an American one. Last weekend, Hortons invaded Manhattan, displacing a dozen Dunkin’ stores and girding for battle with the rest.

But while this development could have been covered and discussed merely as a business story or even a parable of international comeuppance, it was almost instantly analyzed in epicurean terms. Which of the two fast-food chains fried a finer circle of dough? And how did the Hortons nuggetlike Timbit stack up against the shrunken Dunkin’ Munchkin?

The New York Daily News staged a taste test. So did the blogs Urbanite (affiliated with amNY), the Feed (affiliated with TimeOut New York) and Diner’s Journal (affiliated with The New York Times).

In so doing, they showed how the humblest of foodstuffs have come to be treated in the most exalted and rapt of fashions — worthy of probing, pondering and ranking.

This elevation of what was once considered junk food to the subject of vigorous aesthetic analysis represents the convergence of two trend lines. The first is many Americans’ growing sophistication about, and fascination with, what’s for dinner (or breakfast or lunch): the variety of it; the vocabulary for it; where to buy the best this; how to cook the best that. More and more people seem to insist on deliciousness, and more and more seem to have readily articulated opinions to go along with that demand.

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