I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat p... — Werner Herzog

I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk.

Author: Werner Herzog

Insight: There's something refreshingly honest about rejecting the whole performance of fine dining. Herzog isn't making a virtue-signaling point about being down-to-earth—he's describing a real preference that cuts against what we're supposed to want. Most of us feel this tension without quite admitting it: the exhaustion of following invisible rules, the waiter hovering at precisely the wrong moments, the anxiety that you're holding your fork incorrectly. Meanwhile, the potato chips taste like actual food, and the sidewalk means you can people-watch and think freely. What's interesting is that this isn't really about money or snobbery. It's about attention. Fine dining demands you perform politeness and restraint when what you might actually want is simplicity and presence. You're supposed to be grateful for the experience, the ambiance, the story they're telling about the meal. But some people—and Herzog seems to be one—just want to eat without the weight of all that constructed meaning. The real rebellion here is preferring authenticity to spectacle, and honestly, most of us recognize that longing. We just don't always give ourselves permission to act on it. We show up to the formal restaurant because we think we should, not because we actually want to be there. Herzog's point, stripped down, is simple: stop pretending.

Source: Conquest of the Useless, 2009