Novelty and Loyalty
Mar 27th, 2007 by Eats Wombats
When I lived in Holland I had the same thing for lunch 4 days a week in a local bakkerij: a crispy brown roll with ham, salad (incl. bean shoots and other delicious stuff), known as a broodje gezond or health sandwich, followed by a cappucino and a gevulde koek, a kind of marzipan filled cookie. (The word cookie is from Dutch).
On Fridays, more often than not, I went to a nearby Turkish restaurant, where my choices varied a little, but I invariably consumed both Efes, my favorite beer, and quanties of Indonesian sambal (to which cold Efes was a delightful antidote). A shoarma with sambal and Efes is one of the things I miss about Holland, and the only Dutch thing about it was the bringing together of these things.
I have always been happy, after a little shopping around, to stick rather faithfully to things I like. In the last restaurant I frequented every week in a small town in the Philippines I had the pollo parmigiano every time. I didn’t need to order, just nod, unless, exceptionally, if I’d been there on consecutive evenings and I wanted to try something else.
“Don’t you get bored having the same thing all the time?” friends asked occasionally. Well, no. I wouldn’t order the same dish again if I didn’t like it and it’s not as if my diet was otherwise in a rut. I just take an almost ritualistic pleasure in this consistency, my personal traditions.
Nobody ever thought it odd that my father in law smoked the same brand of pipe tobacco all his life or read The Times every day. So why does my preference for a pizza tropicale in a particular restaurant amuse my children? If this is consistently good what’s the chance that the calzone which I didn’t like as much last time will be outstanding this time?
Western consumer society seems increasingly obsessed with choice. Those who live in this society all the time seem to take the proliferation of variety and novelty for granted. I, however, still experience something that is at least culture shock, with twinges of moral uneasiness, when I visit a large supermarket here. Very little is simple any more.
Last year, on a visit to Vancouver, I was so stunned at a selection of over 400 kinds of salad dressing in a supermarket that I was approached by a member of staff and asked if I was alright. I wasn’t paralyzed with indecision, like the proverbial mosquito at nudist camp, I was simply floored. Where does it end? 500? 1000? Who needs a large variety of low fat dressings with “simulated bacon flavor bits”? Has the world taken leave of its senses?
If the insane variety of everything from toothpaste to sausages is anything to go by, every shopper is in search of his or her personal catnip, their own peculiar permutations of novelty and commodified luxury. The menthol 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner and the peach and apricot breakfast juice and low fat, live bacteria yogurt etc. Everything new and improved! Product differentiation gone mad. Vegetables from every corner of the earth. Even traditional whiskies are not spared this apalling trend. The loon who doesn’t know which ones have added caramel (an abomination) can now choose at the very least between the oak and the sherry casked variety. It’s all precious and ridiculous and would be exposed as such in any blind taste tests, I am certain.
SO… you can imagine how smug I felt on reading Dr.Gilbert report on experimental data on satisfaction with restaurant meals that shows that variety made people less satisfied not more. (After a perfect pizza tropicale who needs to have anything other than the usual amaretto or sambuca with a nice capuccino? Not me.)
I took this photo for a talk I never gave and later shared it, I’ve forgotten on what pretext, with some colleagues. One asked me what special photo technique I’d used for the before and after effects. It’s a very unusual technique called “Buying the same pair of shoes.”
My wife bought a pair of shoes for me once–to get married in (I was doing exams at the time). They were black and on special offer at two pounds, a fact visible to everybody in church when I knelt at the altar. Yes, it has been a joke at least once a year ever since.
Some months ago, on a joint shopping trip, she had the neck to make fun of my buying the same shoes yet again. She was soliciting commiseration from the checkout girl.
“You should be happy” I replied. “A man who needs different shoes every time might need a change of wife too.” The checkout girl was quite amused at the competing appeals for her sympathies as purchases were rung up, as if this was an unusual occurrence (which I doubt). Capitalizing on this, I suggested a discount as one shoe had a black stain on it. In truth it was a very small defect and the instant 5 pound reduction was nothing but goodwill. I later put the money toward some flowers. Yes, of course, the ones I usually buy! And oddly enough, I have yet to hear: “Oh, not these again!”
