David Kamp

As a cultural writer and essayist, David Kamp gets to write about things we all can relate to… food, music, sports, movies, memories. He approaches these subjects with thoughtfulness and levity, and often gets to talk to the people he’s thinking about, whether it’s the chef Thomas Keller, the Steelers safety Troy Polamalu, the reclusive novelist Don DeLillo, or the still more reclusive hitmaker Sly Stone.

Kamp’s exploration of the American food scene opens onto a larger look at the American scene in general. He has written and spoken about how we have evolved from a food-phobic nation to a technicolor foodie dreamland—and how there has been resistance all the way, with the forces of progress and invention doubted and sometimes thwarted by populists who fear “elites” and anyone who likes a good runny French cheese. (As recently as the 2008 presidential election, it was an issue of contention that candidate Obama invoked the words “arugula” and “Whole Foods” while on the stump.)

Kamp doesn’t do the food world the disservice of treating it like a twee, precious little place that shouldn’t be taken seriously. It’s a world of big ideas and crazy ambition, of real talent and real passion. Food people are as fascinating—and brilliant, and contrary, and rivalrous, and inventive, and compelling—as rock musicians, politicians, novelists, and movie directors. Kamp accords them the appropriate treatment as cultural difference-makers.

Kamp also looks at the larger context of American dreams and priorities. Better food is definitely something worth aspiring to, but bigger, better… everything? “The middle class is a good place to be, and, optimally, where most Americans will spend their lives if they work hard and don’t over-extend themselves financially,” he has written. “On American Idol, Simon Cowell has done a great many youngsters a great service by telling them that they’re not going to Hollywood and that they should find some other line of work. The American Dream is not fundamentally about stardom or extreme success; in recalibrating our expectations of it, we need to appreciate that it is not an all-or-nothing deal—that it is not, as in hip-hop narratives and in Donald Trump’s brain, a stark choice between the penthouse and the streets.”