Taste feels personal. We like what we like. We trust our palate. We speak about food as pleasure, nostalgia, or indulgence. Yet in professional kitchens, culinary media, and the world of high-end dining, taste is rarely neutral. It is shaped, trained, filtered, and validated by systems of authority and power.
Behind every dish that is celebrated—on a magazine cover, a Michelin-starred menu, or a viral social feed—there lies a network of decisions, practices, and hierarchies. Craft is essential, but craft alone does not guarantee recognition. Understanding this invisible architecture is critical for chefs, editors, and anyone who wants to navigate the culinary world with both skill and insight.
The First Layer: Learned Palates and Cultural Frameworks
Professional taste is rarely instinctive. It is taught. Culinary schools, mentorship, media, and institutions create the frameworks through which flavor is evaluated. Certain combinations, textures, and techniques are elevated; others are dismissed as simplistic or unsophisticated.
This is not a matter of right or wrong—it is lineage. Taste travels with authority. When a dish is recognized as refined, it often aligns with dominant culinary languages: classical European technique, institutional standards, or media-approved narratives. Innovation is valued only when it is legible within these frameworks.
The Second Layer: Craft Within Context
Execution matters, but always within the bounds of recognition. A perfectly roasted duck can be ignored if it does not fit a publication’s narrative or a brand’s identity. Craft is inseparable from context: how it is presented, who presents it, and under which platform.
Chefs and creators learn to navigate these boundaries strategically. Provenance, sustainability, nostalgia, and minimalism are not neutral descriptors; they are signals. They communicate alignment to gatekeepers who determine visibility and authority.
The Third Layer: Power Determines Visibility
The most revealing aspect of taste is what is excluded. Entire culinary traditions exist outside the canon not because of lack of skill, but because they operate under different cultural or stylistic frameworks. When these cuisines enter mainstream attention, they are often reframed to fit dominant narratives: selective ingredients, isolated techniques, stripped context.
Taste is as much a gatekeeping mechanism as it is a sensory experience. Media, critics, and institutions reinforce patterns, validating certain styles repeatedly until preference feels natural, even inevitable.
When Innovation Appears
Shifts in taste reveal the system’s architecture. When previously ignored ingredients or techniques are celebrated, it is rarely because the food changed—it is the lens that changed. Authority moves, and taste follows. This underscores a critical truth: excellence alone does not secure recognition. Visibility is negotiated. Craft must speak the language of the system.
Craft and Power: Two Sides of the Same Plate
The craft behind taste is technical and strategic simultaneously. Precision, balance, and execution matter. But these qualities are only recognized when they intersect with the invisible power structures that define taste.
Chefs, writers, and culinary creators who understand this duality operate differently. They design ideas with awareness of both the plate and the system that validates it. Recognition, impact, and influence are rarely accidental.
Images sourced from Unsplash.