If you regularly read my blog, you know that I am food passionate about ALL kinds of food.  Yes, I dream about and love those five course dinners where each course is paired with a different wine and you blissfully dine for three hours.  But I also crave a great slice of pizza,  really good french fries and an occasional late night fast food meal (see my blog on Taco Bell’s Smothered Burrito).  I also remember, mostly fondly, being, ahem, younger and coming home after a long night of drinking ravenous and eating what most of us know as “drunk food”.  Most, if not all of us, went through that phase where we did a lot of our eating after two a.m.  And let’s face it, what we wanted was fast, fried, greasy and cheesy.  In other words, I get it.    But, as of late, I have become concerned with the youth of our country.  Not because of the usual stuff, but because they really don’t seem to care about food!  How did I come to this conclusion?  I recently moved to Pacific Beach and what I have seen over the past few months makes me worry for our culinary future.

For those not familiar with Pacific Beach (PB) , it lies in San Diego between La Jolla and Mission Beach.  It has the nickname of “Party Beach”.  In fact, until 2007, one could drink alcohol ON the beach!   You can no longer drink on the beach, but quite frankly, there is no need for it.  Pacific Beach is packed with drinking establishments just steps from the sand.   With even more drinking/eating establishments lining the blocks leading to the beach.  As a person that LOVES to go out to eat and drink, moving here was exciting, especially because I had spent so many years in a rural part of Arizona with a dearth of restaurants.   So when I moved here, my husband and I excitedly started trying all the restaurants.  Our excitement quickly turned to disappointment.  Almost every restaurant had the exact same menu: fried food, chicken wings, burgers and a token salad.  Yes, I like ALL of those things, just not ALL the time. Furthermore, while they all had an extensive craft beer selection (with alcohol content posted by each beer!), they had a VERY limited and honestly, not very good, wine selection.  Don’t get me wrong, I do like craft beer, but I also REALLY enjoy a nice glass of wine and in PB that is about as hard to come by as a girl wearing shorts that actually cover her ass (yes, you read that right!).  We soon realized that almost every restaurant/bar in PB was catering to the 20 somethings with chilled Jagermeister on tap, slushy drinks composed of vodka and red bull and just enough fried food offered to soak it all up.  Before I’m pegged as a bitter, older woman, let me say, that I think that one should be wild when one is young and part of that “wildness” is sometimes stupidly drinking alcohol infused slushies chased with shots of Jager.   But, I also remember when I was younger and wilder… And even then, my friends and I tempered our “wild” nights with appetizers and wine at “nice” restaurants.  We were interested in fine food and wine and looked forward to splurging on a meal at a nicer restaurant.  We wanted to expand our culinary knowledge by eating different foods and trying new wines.  This is what I don’t see here.

Is it just in PB?  Or is this the way it is with the majority of younger people?  Do they really have no interest in good food and wine?  I hope not!  Appreciating good food and wine will always help them as they navigate through this world.  Just when I was about to give up hope, we found a wonderful little Italian restaurant with authentic (and delicious!) food plus a really nice wine list.  As my husband and I dined, we looked around at the other patrons.  All were our age or older.  Damn! But as we were leaving, a group of 20 somethings were coming into the restaurant and I overheard one of the girls saying to her friends, “They have the BEST house-made pasta here and a really affordable Chianti!”  And yes, all the girls were wearing shorts that actually covered their ass… There is hope after all!