You Cannot Make Potatoes Sexy

Published on Friday, January 13, 2012, by Rebecca Flint Marx / Edit Post

I went to a lunch co-sponsored by the Idaho Potato Commission in New York this week and ate a lot of starch. Actually, the food was excellent—potato skins stuffed with crème fraîche and caviar (cooked by the chef of the Manhattan restaurant Back Forty) were as good an argument as any to make the case that 2012 is, as the commission asserts, the year of the potato.

But I was struck during the commission rep’s post-entrée, pre-dessert speech that for all the Idaho potato’s noble attributes (Fluffiness! Versatility! Low water content!), there really is no way to give it the sex appeal of pork belly or Sriracha; trying to do so risks sounding like self-parody. The potato is steadfastly lumpen, about as titillating as a La-Z-Boy or pledge-drive tote bag.

But Idaho is proud of its russets, and certainly lavishes enough resources on their promotion. Compared to, for example, the Georgia Peanut Commission’s rather humble website, the Idaho Potato Commission’s is a multimedia fantasia, boasting recipes, factoids, nutritional information, and promotional videos that show Denise Austin (pictured) sashaying in slo-mo through a field of russets. The potato even gets its own biography of sorts, a volume titled Aristocrat in Burlap. The commission hosts luncheons like the one I attended several times a year across the country, plying chefs with modest swag bags that include a “Foodservice Toolkit,” a calendar with monthly testimonials from chefs who are “passionate about potatoes” (“I think potato is a wonderful vehicle,” proclaims Susan Feniger), and Spuddy Buddy, a stuffed mascot that wears a T-shirt, socks, and high-tops, and is, as anthropomorphic root vegetables go, actually pretty cute.

But do we really need to be convinced of a potato’s relative hotness, much less that it’s having its very own year? Because isn’t every year more or less the year of the potato? Whether or not chefs are being paid to shout the virtues of potatoes from the mountaintop, you’d be hard-pressed to find any restaurant, high or low, that doesn’t serve at least one potato dish, and our national addiction to french fries alone has been fueling the industry for decades. That’s the great thing about potatoes: They’re eternal (well, except for that one time), and they ask not to be in the spotlight. Only to be eaten.

Image source: Idaho Potato Commission

CHOW contributor Rebecca Flint Marx eats and writes in New York City. You can follow her on Twitter. Follow CHOW, too, and become a fan on Facebook.

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POST A COMMENT |13 Comments

COMMENT

  • All I can say is Pommes Anna and Pommes Souflée.

  • Er...why does any food need to be sexy? Isn't it bad enough that for some reason chocolate manufacturers find it not only acceptable but also perfectly normal to have adverts with women in various seductive poses practically fellating chocolate bars?

  • Potatoes with creme fraiche and caviar is almost retro--I remember them passed at Y2K parties.

    The potato commission is always trying something wacky to get people to appreciate the spud, but when it comes down to it, they're simply amazing and as versatile as eggs.

  • I dunno. Hogshead cafe does Loaded tater tots with big chunks of farm bacon, fresh onion and green onions, and cheese. They are pretty dang sexy. I have pictures to prove it ;)

  • This may be a false memory, but I seem to recall reading a consumer behavior psych study which found that if there is a potato dish on the plate, the vast majority of US diners will eat that for the first bite. Certainly for me it's true. Come on, the noble potato doesn't need to be "sexy"; the food which gave us the hash brown has nothing left to prove.

  • One word: fingerlings.

  • Nice comments... I always consider potatoes to be the workhorse, Bud the Spud, always there to make other things look beautiful but taste great. While nearly everyone loves potatoes and the unaided awareness of PEI potatoes is especially high (usually 85% when asked where the best potatoes are grown... will state "PEI") we actually only produce about one third of the total North American...+READ

    Nice comments... I always consider potatoes to be the workhorse, Bud the Spud, always there to make other things look beautiful but taste great. While nearly everyone loves potatoes and the unaided awareness of PEI potatoes is especially high (usually 85% when asked where the best potatoes are grown... will state "PEI") we actually only produce about one third of the total North American consumption. Over 40 states/provinces grow potatoes. So our efforts with the lunches are targeted to key decision makers, like chefs or bloggers to be sure to not just order potatoes for their menus, but to request PEI potatoes!-COLLAPSE

  • pommes parisienne.

  • I thought 2008 was the year of the potato.

  • a velvety vichysoisse ...

  • What's more boring than a website about potatoes? A column about a website about potatoes.

  • The only sexy potato route I can see is going the 'heirloom' route - or rather, introducing varieties of potatoes that haven't made it to the big time, local South American varieties not known out of their neighbourhood, etc. But I don't think that's what the Idaho Potato Commission really wants. Making the standard big starchy spud sexy will be a really hard sell.

  • Nice comments... I always consider potatoes to be the workhorse, Steady Eddy, always there to make other things look beautiful but taste great. While nearly everyone loves potatoes and the unaided awareness of Idaho potatoes is especially high (usually 85% when asked where the best potatoes are grown... will state "Idaho") we actually only produce about one third of the total US consumption. Over...+READ

    Nice comments... I always consider potatoes to be the workhorse, Steady Eddy, always there to make other things look beautiful but taste great. While nearly everyone loves potatoes and the unaided awareness of Idaho potatoes is especially high (usually 85% when asked where the best potatoes are grown... will state "Idaho") we actually only produce about one third of the total US consumption. Over 40 states grow potatoes. So our efforts with the lunches are targeted to key decision makers, like chefs or bloggers to be sure to not just order potatoes for their menus, but to request Idaho.-COLLAPSE