What Does “Gourmet” Even Mean?

Gourmet is one of those words we all seem to understand until someone asks us to define it. We use it for cheese and chocolate, restaurants and grocery stores, and occasionally a bag of popcorn that costs more than lunch. Somewhere along the way, the word became tangled up with the idea of expensive food: imported ingredients, elaborate meals, tiny portions, and names you hesitate to say out loud because you're not entirely sure how the accent goes. But “gourmet” has less to do with how fancy something is than we tend to think.

 At Bon Vivant, we work with food all day, and much of what we love most isn't particularly complicated. A good piece of cheese with a cracker. Olives straight from the container while no one is looking. A spoonful of jam that somehow makes you reconsider jam entirely. These aren't elaborate foods. What makes them memorable is usually much simpler: somebody cared about the ingredients and knew what to do with them.

So, What Are We Actually Paying For?

 It’s easy to assume that gourmet is another word for expensive, especially when you're standing in front of two jars of the same thing and one costs noticeably more. Sometimes there is a reason for that difference. The fruit might be harvested somewhere specific, the cheese aged for months or years, or the meat cured using a process that can't be hurried along simply because we'd like it to be. Other times, the more expensive option is simply the more expensive option.

Price alone doesn't tell you whether something is good. Neither does a beautiful label, an imported stamp, or a description with enough adjectives to fill up an entire page. The real test happens when you eat it.

That is part of what makes food so interesting. You don't need to know everything about a product to recognize that it tastes different. Maybe the olive oil is grassier than the bottle you usually buy. Maybe the cheese changes completely when you add a little honey. Maybe you came in convinced you hated blue cheese and discovered that, actually, you hated one blue cheese you tried eight years ago. Taste is personal.

A Gourmet Market Should Make Trying Things Easier

Walking into a specialty market can sometimes feel like you're expected to arrive with prior knowledge, but you aren’t! You shouldn't need to know the difference between every cheese in the case or exactly which wine belongs beside which meat. Half the fun is finding out. Ask questions. Tell us what you normally like. Tell us what you absolutely do not like. Pick up something because the packaging caught your eye. Try the weird thing! That sense of discovery is a big part of what we want Bon Vivant to be.

 Our shelves aren't meant to be a collection of things you're supposed to be impressed by. They're meant to be eaten. The same goes for our charcuterie boards. We choose the components because they make sense together, not because every board needs the longest possible list of ingredients. Sometimes one great cheese, the right meat, a little sweetness, and something salty are all you really need.

 Maybe We've Been Overthinking It

The funny thing about “gourmet” is that the more you talk about it, the less glamorous it becomes. It comes back to good ingredients, people who know what they're doing with them, and the person eating them actually enjoying the result. That's about it.

You don't have to develop a sophisticated palate before walking into a gourmet market. You don't have to pretend you taste “notes of volcanic rock” in your wine. And you certainly don't have to like something just because someone else has decided it's fancy. You just have to be curious enough to try new things

 So come into Bon Vivant in Miami Lakes, wander around, ask us what we've been loving lately, and leave with something you haven't tried before. Maybe you'll find a new favorite. Maybe you'll confirm once and for all that blue cheese isn't for you. Either way, at least you'll have an answer the next time someone asks what “gourmet” actually means.