"Blindspots"

Is food political?  Absolutely.  Food criticism?  Korsha Wilson argues, even more:

"I did not feel any of the delight that most of the critics felt. Instead, I felt embarrassed by this nostalgia, and the fact that I had just participated in it. I wondered why, in New York City, one of the most diverse places in the country, I was one of two black patrons in a dining room at one of the best-reviewed restaurants of the past year on a Friday night; I imagined how those reviews might have been different if any of them had been written by a person of color.

While for some, Kennedy-era Manhattan is an inspirational time, calling to mind gleaming buildings and uncut optimism, for others, it represents a bleak period of misery and oppression. The original Four Seasons opened in the space in 1959, five years before the Civil Rights Act was passed, meaning I might not have been able to eat where the Grill now stands; in fact, it’s hard to imagine that this space would have been quick to welcome black diners even after the act was passed. Or that its designer, the famed architect Philip Johnson, would want them there, given his history as a Nazi sympathizer. This is a context I cannot push to the back of my mind when dining."

One person's "Golden Age" is, of course, another person's memory of oppression.  And it is strange that this kind of culinary nostalgia is taking place in a time and place (New York especially, but large American cities in general) where you can pretty much eat anything from another country with relative authenticity and pay much less for it.