A recent article in the Wall Street Journal wasn’t meant to be hilarious but was a real howler. It was similar to daily stories in the Tucson media.
Published on Sept. 20, 2024, the article was titled, “Why Boise Might Secretly Be the Coolest City in the Pacific Northwest.”
The author thinks she knows cool but doesn’t even know that Idaho is one of the Mountain states and is not in the Pacific Northwest.
Boise had a reputation for being a clean, safe and boring family town, one with relatively good public schools, low poverty, and a lot of outdoor recreational options. So how has it suddenly become cool?
Boise has become cool the same way that Tucson and scores of other cities have—except that in comparison to Boise, Tucson has high crime, high poverty, and terrible test scores.
Like Tucson, Boise now has some hip restaurants downtown, where expensive and pretentious foo-foo food is served to what used to be called Yuppies—that is, young, urban, college-educated, childless professionals who see themselves as sophisticated, avant-garde, worldly, and hip.
The new Yuppies are typically served by tattooed, ringed, studded, green-haired, and low-wage wait-staff, who also see themselves as hip, or maybe bohemian.
Coincidentally, as I was typing this on Sept. 22, a news flash came across my screen about four people being fatally shot and 18 being wounded in a drive-by shooting in the nightlife area of Birmingham, Alabama, a city of high crime and poverty.
This makes me wonder what goes through the minds of patrons of nightlife areas in poor cities when they leave the shiny hipster part of town and drive through neighborhoods of crime, poverty, broken families, drug addiction, and homeless encampments. If they’re younger than forty, they’ve no doubt been steeped in social justice, albeit a sophomoric version. But do they notice the conditions and human pain? Do they care?
The woman who wrote the story about Boise did not talk about poverty outside of the downtown hipster area, maybe because there isn’t a lot of poverty in the town. However, she was ecstatic about the food scene. Some excerpts:
At Bacon Boise! (the exclamation mark is compulsory), I found bacon-infused everything, including Bloody Marys and cinnamon rolls.
Kelsey Schulte, 21, offered me a swig of her coffee drink at Hyde Perk when she overheard me OMG-ing about the listed ingredients (4 shots of espresso, white chocolate powder, caramel drizzle).
Chef Kris Komori put the city on the foodie map a decade ago at the now-closed State and Lemp. His new restaurant, Kin, nabbed a James Beard award in 2023 with cerebral but lighthearted fine dining pegged to rotating themes.
A delightful, five-course menu themed around fables kicked off with “The Grasshopper & The Ant,” a tomato tart showcasing preservation techniques to “prepare for the days of necessity,” just as the ant does in that story.
When I stepped into the Lively, with its hand-painted wallpaper by de Gournay, I was glad I’d dressed up. The owners, East Coast transplants Greg and Kari Strimple, serve up big-city ambience. Kicky dishes like kabocha pumpkin risotto with agrodolce and fried sage showcase chef Edward Higgins’s track record as a Michelin-starred chef with stints in Japan, France and New York City.
At Saltbrush, a few blocks away, chef Erik Johnson turns out grown-in-Boise but globally inflected dishes such as coal-roasted carrots alongside za’atar-flecked ricotta, and piri-piri-spiced roast chicken with coriander jus.
I can be a food snob, too. For decades, I’ve been searching in vain for cuisine that rivals the Northern Italian cooking of my nonna and mom, neither of whom had fancy names for it.
Speaking of Italy, “chefs” from Tucson recently went to Parma, Italy to show off their Mexican cooking of rice, beans, lard, and mystery meat. That would be akin to officials from the underperforming Tucson Unified School District going to countries that lead the world in primary and secondary education—such as Finland, South Korea, and Japan—to brag about their teaching prowess.
Thankfully, people are starting to see through the pretentiousness, silliness, and sameness of the foo-foo food scene in towns across America. To wit, below are some sample reader comments on the WSJ article. Bon appétit!
Kevin Morgan:
Once you read an article like this, you know the town (insert name here) has essentially jumped the shark.
Anthony Taylor:
Another community turning into a YUPPIE theme park. Can’t wait for the premier of “Real Housewives of Boise.”
Tim Jones:
You lost me at ” four shots of espresso and white chocolate with a Carmel drizzle.” Not coffee.
Bill Schmaltz:
Great. So the Californicationing of still another formerly-authentic city has proceeded in Boise. Soon we’ll all be as hip as those in LA, Seattle, Portland, parts of Brooklyn, etc. What could be more exciting than having everyone and everything in the US be pretty much the same?
Bill Pippin:
I live in Knoxville, Tennessee, which is following a similar path. Eastern Tennessee has been predominantly Red ever since I can remember, but Knoxville for reasons I cannot comprehend has a Democratic female mayor who seems to be on a mission to make our town the Portland of the South. Moreover, trendiness in my book is not a positive. It means more loud, over-priced restaurants teeming with thirty somethings, which is why we dine out less frequently. This weekend the city was overrun by 150,000 gen Z’ers in cowboy boots attending two sold out Morgan Wallen concerts in Neyland Stadium, another reason to stay at home. Now that I’m nearing full retirement, I’m looking for a less trendy home if there are any remaining.
Myers:
When an area starts seeing an influx of NYC Michelin star chefs, trendy, hip and cool stuff, they have officially been invaded.
A cocktail bar with a “mountain tiki look”? There goes the neighborhood.
Ronald Graves:
A great many thousands of us knew Boise for decades when it really was an exceptional place. It was a place that those with your view won’t ever understand. It had empathy, great vision, friendliness, neighborly support, a social connectedness, physical and cultural grace, and a wonderful pace. We created everything for more than 100 years that Boise needed to thrive, because we were 400 miles from the next sizable town.
And it was so much more that can never be explained. It had to be lived to know how very special it was. That remarkable town is lost to us all forever. Those of us who spent decades building Boise into what it once was are allegedly home, yet we are all homesick. So go to whatever concrete-walled, metal-pipes-in-the-ceiling restaurant you want. But just know: you long ago missed the great times.
Sara Smith:
Is there anything else to do in Boise? Any culture? Museums? Local artisans? Or is it just another restaurant scene? It seems as if every town and city now has “craft” beers and “fresh and seasonal” restaurants and nothing else. They’re all starting to look the same.
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Mr. Cantoni can be reached at [email protected].
