You’ve heard it before, life is unfair.
If, for example, the Kardashians or the Real Housewives get into a vocal domestic spat, it’s riveting television—apparently. The rest of us would just receive a visit from the local constabulary. No lucrative sponsorship deals, no red carpet parties.
More to the point, if the 10-year-old you finishes half a package of Oreos in one sitting it’s to be expected. Try the same feat in front of an aghast significant other four decades later—well, it’s a different story.
Simply put, there are certain culinary habits we should put away at some point and never speak of again. And yet, the act of twisting open a dozen or so Oreos still appeals to us.
Most of us harbor guilty pleasures we’d like to keep tucked away. Indeed, when the streaming service Vudu surveyed America’s leisure habits, 84 percent of those responding admitted to a covert indulgence or two.
Many of these are rather tame—ordering take out because you’re too lazy to cook, snatching an extra scoop of ice cream before the kids get at the mint chocolate chip, that sort of thing. Among the more egregious on the list are surreptitious visits to McDonald’s, munching an entire bag of chips, crumbs and all, and chugging juice from the carton.
Heathens.
Even the finest culinary talents succumb to guilty pleasures, although they are not always keen to admit it.
“I don’t feel guilty about anything I eat, to be honest,” says Klaus Georis, chef at Maligne in Seaside.
Perhaps great chefs deal with culinary indiscretion at a different level. Zach Ladwig, whose menu at the lauded Sur House in the Alila Ventana Big Sur resort offers a menu with notations like fennel-apple sofrito, saffron emulsion and canella sablé. So it’s like his guilty pleasure is Provencial in nature. Right?
“Kraft macaroni and cheese,” he counters.
Wait, what? This is a chef who labors over celeriac and French butter pear potage for guests. But he comes home to a pot of powdered cheese product.
“Millions of dollars or research went into it,” Ladwig explains. “If you make it right, it looks just like it does on the box.”
Granted, the quick and easy presentation of warm gooeyness is an American childhood staple that resonates into adulthood. Restaurants occasionally dress it up with proper cheese sauce and upscale additions, but it remains mac and cheese.
“It’s nostalgic for me,” Ladwig says.
And that’s why scholars struggle to refine a definition of guilty pleasure. Early uses placed more emphasis on sin—hence the guilt—than the associated pleasures. Merriam-Webster traces the first known appearance of the phrase with its modern implication to 1907.
But the word “guilt” continues to cast a pall. Professor Sami Schalk of the University of Wisconsin told the New York Times in 2019 that “a guilty pleasure is something that we enjoy, but we know we’re either not supposed to like, or that liking it says something negative about us.”
Such a definition may stand when it comes to digging into a snack of mayonnaise, as someone admitted to Vudu, but not when there is no inherent wrong. Who doesn’t recall mac and cheese fondly?
Under the circumstances, Georis’ comment makes a certain amount of sense. When he dives into the guilty realm, it’s actually hard not to feel envious.
“I’ll drive to Salinas and eat at four food trucks and then go to El Charrito and bring home a burrito,” Georis says. “It’s fun to eat a bunch of Mexican food.”
Ray Mendoza of Ad Astra Bread Co. in Seaside bakes loaves so crusty and malty that “Ad Astra” appears on the many of the area’s finest restaurant menus. Not surprisingly, his guilty pleasure is a sandwich—kinda.
“It’s-It,” he exclaims, referring to the San Francisco-based ice cream sandwich, also a childhood favorite. “Those are great.”
Mendoza would settle for Häagen-Dazs white chocolate raspberry, without the cookie shell—ice cream is rather a passion of his. But It’s-It is worth a pilgrimage. He has driven by the It’s-It factory along Highway 101 in Burlingame many times and can’t shake the image.
“I’m always curious what the tours are like,” he wonders.
Some chefs are fortunate. Todd Fisher of The Meatery, the go-to butcher located in Seaside, can prepare his own take on a guilty pleasure. Remember those suspect tins of deviled ham on the grocery shelves?
“I love ham,” Fisher points out. “It’s hard not to schmear on anything, or anyone.”
Um…OK. That would be a guilty pleasure—in the old sense. Assuming that he’s speaking figuratively, however, the chef sometimes creates an upscale ham salad that owes nothing to nostalgia.
So yes, chefs have guilty pleasures, ones they will readily admit. They also call into question the actual guilt involved in a bout of personal indulgence.
Come to think of it, as adults we can now pick and choose when to tear open the box of Cheez-Its and chug, no parent approval necessary. Maybe life is fair, after all.