There’s no doubt that articles that urge foodies to travel to far-flung suburbs to sample that tiny mezze place or the city’s best Sichuan cooking have made eating out more exciting. But they also risk creating a Foodie Olympics, where points are awarded for the spiciest, strangest and most obscure – as if turning the food staples of entire cultures into a “culinary adventure” isn’t offensive enough.

“Eventually, a hole-in-the-wall reaches critical white-Instagrammer mass, and the swarm moves on to its next discovery, decrying the former fixation’s loss of authenticity,” Soleil Heil writes in her February 2016 essay ‘Craving the Other.’

Worse still, it sparks the probability that the enthusiasm that sees your average ‘ethnic’ food lover identify star anise from Sichuan pepper with their eyes closed, won’t extend to acknowledging the actual differences between Chinese people.

– I wrote my first article – on the politics of food trends – for SBS Life yesterday. You can read it here.