The Atlantic - 04.2020

(Sean Pound) #1

18


Dispatches


PHOTOGRAPH BY TAMARA SHOPSIN AND JASON FULFORD

all odds, I had come up with
an original idea. Instead, I’d
noticed something that many
others also saw wherever they
looked, once they had heard
the idea articulated.
When Rao mentioned
“premium mediocre” to his
wife, who was eating with
him that day, she immedi-
ately got it. So did his Face-
book friends and Twitter fol-
lowers. “People had started


noticing a pervasive pattern
in everything from groceries
to clothing, and entire styles
of architecture in gentrify-
ing neighborhoods,” he told
me. Premium mediocrity, by
his definition, is a fancy tile
backsplash in an apartment’s
tiny, nearly nonfunctional
kitchen, or french fries doused
in truffle oil, which contains
no actual truffles. It’s Uber
Pool, which makes the luxury

of being chauffeured around
town financially accessible,
yet requires that you brush
thighs with strangers sharing
the back seat.
Rao pegs the beginning of
premium mediocrity’s ascent
to the 2008 financial collapse,
when cupcakes ruled the culi-
nary landscape. The cupcake is
a classic example: It’s a single-
serve dessert on demand,
minus the true indulgence

of buying or making a whole
cake to enjoy over time or
share with family or friends.
Cupcakes look great in pho-
tos, but as has been frequently
noted in the past decade, many
of them are not exactly deli-
cious. I remain unconvinced
that anyone ever took genuine
pleasure in eating a dry, fist-
size Crumbs Bake Shop cup-
cake topped with a mountain
of hardened butter cream.
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