As Dean & DeLuca Dwindles, Culinary Elitism Is Seeing Its Demise, Too

For the last few months, Dean & DeLuca’s gourmet shops have been dwindling from the food scene.

Stores in California, Washington, D.C., and New York are gone, leaving only four outlets listed on its website – two stores and two cafes.

Publications have written what amount to obituaries for the once elite chain, noting that it is sinking under a mountain of debt.

But, I don’t see Dean & DeLuca’s demise as a detriment. I actually think it’s good for the food world, and for food shoppers in general.

To me, Dean & DeLuca represented the utmost in culinary elitism. In its glory days, it typified the concept that the more you paid for something, the better it was, and in turn, the better gourmet food lover you were.

Dean & DeLuca prospered in a late 20th century era when home dining became competitive, pre-dating the showdown cooking shows that now blanket food television.

Exotic food items were the equivalent of Rolex watches and Chanel bags. Hawaiian pink salt. Thirty-year-old balsamic vinegar. Jam produced in small batches by monks.

You might laugh now, at a time when it’s easy to get a shopping bag of good food delivered to your home in less than an hour, or shipped overnight.

But people took all this very, very seriously. You can get a sample of it in Nora Ephron’s novel, Heartburn, a thinly varnished account of her disastrous marriage to Carl Bernstein.

The Meryl Streep movie can’t match the venom that drips in the pages of the book, like Grade A maple syrup from an organic hardwood forest. But I digress.

Heartburn includes a series of recipes that reflect the lengths to which home cooks once went to display their talents.

Those were the days when Gourmet Magazine reigned as the culinary elitists’ bible, featuring muffin recipes like the sauteed apple one I tried that required 14 separate ingredients, and pastries that could take days from start to finish.

Dean & DeLuca fed right into that. The ability to regularly shop there was like a PhD from an Ivy League university, or getting a Manhattan child into a coveted pre-school.

As someone interested in food, I felt obligated years back to make a D&D pilgrimage, as part of my ongoing research.

So, I went to the DC store in Georgetown,the first one to open outside New York, passing up a trip to Britches, my favorite place for preppy casual clothes.

At the time, my food budget was limited, and I was more likely to shop at Safeway or Giant Food (whose name still makes me laugh.) I walked into the store, a converted streetcar car barn, and felt like  I was on a movie set.

Peonies sat in bunches by the front door, each costing $24, more than I spent on groceries for a week. I spent some time strolling around, watching the butchers, looking at the prepared foods, knowing a $20 bill would maybe cover a single carry out lunch.

I left without buying anything. But whenever I would go out to concerts at Wolf Trap, I’d look across the lawn at picnics, and spot the inevitable Dean & DeLuca bags, in their distinctive typeface, and understand my place in the culinary hierarchy: at the bottom.

Years later, I stayed at a boutique New York City hotel, which boasted a restaurant from a famous chef, and tiny rooms with minimalist decor. Hanging up my clothes, I discovered the minibar and a wooden tray with containers of sweets on top.

The lids bore the Dean & DeLuca label, and out of curiosity, I examined the little plastic cups. There were chocolate covered dried cherries, and candies that looked similar to peanut M&Ms. There were jelly beans, and licorice.

The selection looked enticing, until I found the price on the minibar menu: $11, for about a cup of sweets.

I’m sure some tired, well-heeled hipster traveler bought them. I’m sure they were tasty.

Through the years, Dean & DeLuca fed a lot of wealthy people. And it may have made it possible for us less-wealthy people to have enjoyed gourmet items, too.

These days, I mainly shop at a couple of places, including my local Trader Joe’s. I’ve become an avid reader of the Fearless Flyer, its monthly newsletter that highlights the newest items on its shelves and in its frozen food section.

I’m constantly amazed at the things that pop up there, which used to be found only in much more expensive stores.

This week, I found a bin of brightly colored Hatch green chiles from New Mexico, a taste I’d come to love while living nearby in Arizona.

Recently, in a freezer, I saw a package of Shakshuka Starter, containing the spicy tomato sauce needed for the Middle Eastern egg dish. I usually made mine from scratch, so I was a little skeptical about the frozen version.

I asked Alon Shaya, the James Beard Award winning chef who has served shakshuka at his restaurants, what he thought.

Shaya gave it his blessing, and I figured that if the Trader Joe’s version was good enough for an award winning professional, it was fine for the masses, too.

Needless to say, Dean & DeLuca was never about the masses. But these days, pretty much anyone interested in food, and with access to a decent grocery store or to the Internet, can enjoy some of the things that have been on its shelves.

Now, of course, there’s still plenty of culinary elitism to go around. New York abounds with restaurants serving tasting menus that soar to $400 and up, some of which look designed primarily for Instagram rather than the palate.

Not long ago, I went to a pasta tasting at Zingerman’s Deli, the market in Ann Arbor, Mich. Shopping afterward, I found an interesting looking dried noodle that I was going to buy, until I saw $19 price.

I’m sure there was a justifiable back story, since Zingerman’s features small producers from all over the world. It just wasn’t one that fit into my budget that evening.

But Beard Award winning chefs like Chicago’s Zachary Engel, who once worked for Shaya, are striving to keep prices at a more modest level, allowing customers of all level of pocketbooks to visit their restaurants.

Rather than the $100 to $190 typical at some upscale places, he’s aimed for an average dinner check of about $65 at his new restaurant, Galit, which is already winning rave reviews for his Mediterranean good.

Says Engel, “I’m not charging $80 for hummus.” At Galit, $65 buys a table full of food, and, his place is packed.

So, rest in peace, Dean & DeLuca stores, and let culinary elitism die with it.