the.com/gourmet
A food critic's permission slip to charge triple for smaller portions.
means A person with expert, refined taste in fine food and drink — or, as an adjective, food prepared or presented with that same elevated discernment.
from Borrowed straight from French gourmet, originally meaning a wine-taster or wine merchant's assistant, likely related to the Old French groumet, a wine-trade servant or valet. It drifted upward in company, swapping cellars for dining rooms, and by the 18th-19th century had broadened in English to mean anyone with a cultivated, fussy appreciation for good food in general. Folk tradition likes to link it to 'gourmand,' but the two words actually travelled separate, only distantly related paths — gourmet stayed the snob, gourmand stayed the glutton.
- origin
- French for wine merchant's assistant, not chef
- legal status
- unregulated word, anyone can slap it on
- marketing trick
- often just regular food, better lit
- true test
- ingredients, not plating, make it real