The group organizes at Tompkins Sq. (Image: Bob Knorpp)
I am not a foodie.
I admittedly have taken pictures of food and posted them online, and even talked glowingly of a restaurant experience once or twice on a blog. But there’s an invisible line you cross when you become a foodie. Food becomes serious business. There may even be tattoos involved. Not sure. But I am sure that I’m just not there yet.
Yet, when my good friend Jerlyn Thomas invited me to yet another food crawl — this time for Guacamole — I decided it was time to once more brave the world of the foodies.
What is a “food crawl,” you ask?
Good question. A food crawl is where a group of food lovers gather together and move from establishment to establishment sampling one particular menu item. Sometimes it’s desserts. Sometimes it’s entrees. Sometimes it’s appetizers. But the basic premise is that the organizers have picked a selection of restaurants for you to visit and over the course of a few hours you visit as many as you can in small groups.
People are better than food. (Image: Bob Knorpp)
The New York City Food Crawl group is definitely a fun and creative bunch. Past crawls have involved everything from hot wings to pastries. So it’s always an adventure to hang with them. But I had my rules. And these rules are important. Because they hold the key to a non-foodie having a good time in the foodie world.
First Rule: No Food Porn
I had my DSLR, so the temptation to snap perfect pictures of every dish was certainly there. And if I had been serious about doing restaurant reviews I would have snapped the pics willingly. But a non-foodie on a food crawl has no business participating in the food porn of ohs and ahs as camera phones click. Leave that to the serious folks. They know their business and they have their methods. Trying to one-up them at their own game would be like stepping onto the court at Wimbledon to teach a few moves to Roger Federer. Leave it to the pros.
Bri-ahhh-na splits time w/ Facebook. (Image: Bob Knorpp)
Second Rule: Meet People
You as a non-foodie have no hope of having the orgasmic delight that others are experiencing as their perfectly formed chips slide into the rich and delightful texture of the guacamole and then rise to their tongues in an exquisite explosion of flavors.
Yeah.
So introduce yourself and get to know folks. The foodies may be uncomfortable at first having their concentration broken, but half the reason for doing a food crawl is to have fun and meet people. And frankly, the foodies are pretty nice once you draw them out. They just tend to talk about food a lot. But you can work around that. Most of the time.
Third Rule: Don’t Mock The Food
Casey and "Swiss" enjoy the night. (Image: Bob Knorpp)
You may get a little loose after a few cocktails and the temptation will be there on the third restaurant to say something along the lines that, “My German grandmother could have made better guacamole than this!” Resist! You don’t go to your friend’s house and say, “God, your kid is ugly!” So don’t be messing with the food. You are an outsider no matter how friendly things get. Best to behave accordingly.
Fourth Rule: Don’t Push It
There’s a completionist mentality to these experiences. You have a list. Many of you may feel the need to complete that list. Don’t! When you get tired, leave. No one will think less of you than they already do. (You aren’t a foodie, after all. No one expects you to make it anyway.) Just go to hang out and meet the nice people and leave your competitiveness at home. There’s nothing to prove here. Unless you are a closet foodie. Then there is plenty to prove. But if that’s the case, this whole guide is pretty useless anyway.
And that’s my guide. I had a great time last night. One might say I was the life of the party. With nary a picture of food, yet. I’d call that a success.
A great way to unlock 4Sq Badges. (Image: Bob Knorpp)
Robert Knorpp is host of The BeanCast Marketing Podcast at thebeancast.com and is President of The Cool Beans Group, a marketing strategy consultancy based in New York City. He likes laughing even more than breathing. You can follow the madness on Twitter at twitter.com/BobKnorpp.
