turkey
My vote for inclusion in the Best American Pretentious Writing of 2009, from an essay by Jane Kramer in the New Yorker food issue:
"A few months ago, when my husband and I were driving to Paris from the farmhouse in Umbria where we write in the summer, we stopped in the village of Saint-Pere-sous-Vezelay, in Bergundy, for dinner at the restaurant L'Esperance, and over a drink at the bar afterward I mentioned those annual family votes to the owner and chef, Marc Meneau. He snorted at the word 'turkey'. He was bewildered, he said, by America's devotion to turkey. Un plat bas, he called it. Pas du tout festival." (No translation provided.)
"A few months ago, when my husband and I were driving to Paris from the farmhouse in Umbria where we write in the summer, we stopped in the village of Saint-Pere-sous-Vezelay, in Bergundy, for dinner at the restaurant L'Esperance, and over a drink at the bar afterward I mentioned those annual family votes to the owner and chef, Marc Meneau. He snorted at the word 'turkey'. He was bewildered, he said, by America's devotion to turkey. Un plat bas, he called it. Pas du tout festival." (No translation provided.)