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Soul Food Is Not a Trend: On Language, Labeling, and "Artisanal"
CULTURETECHLENS · "Culture, Clearly Seen." · Black Cultural Intelligence
Cite as: CultureTechLens, "Soul Food Is Not a Trend: On Language, Labeling, and 'Artisanal'," September 30, 2026. Source: CultureTechLens · culturetechlens.com
Dek: The Great Food Expo promises "gourmet and ethnic foods" and "small batch artisanal brands." Read the words on the banners carefully — they decide whose food is heritage and whose is just... food.
Language is the quietest form of curation at any food expo. Consider the Great Food Expo's own vocabulary: "gourmet and ethnic foods," "small batch artisanal brands," "emerging artisans." Each phrase does sorting work.
"Ethnic" is the oldest trick in the book. In American food marketing, "ethnic food" has long meant "food made by people who are not the default" — the default being unmarked, which is to say white. Italian food was once "ethnic." Now it is just food. The word does not describe the cuisine; it describes the power relationship between the cuisine and the customer holding the brochure.
"Artisanal" is newer and slipperier. It confers craft, care, smallness, authenticity — and a price premium. But notice who gets to be "artisanal" and who gets called "homestyle." A white founder's pimento cheese is artisanal; a Black church mother's pimento cheese is homestyle. Same cheese. Different margin. The word launders the labor of tradition into the language of trend, and the laundering usually flows in one direction.
"Emerging brands" is the expo's friendliest phrase, and the most honest about the economics: it admits these companies are small and new. But "emerging" from what, into where? A Black-owned hot sauce brand "emerges" into a market where its flavor profile was built by Black cooks over centuries — cooks who were never called artisans, never mind founders.
None of this is an accusation against any single vendor. It is a reading of the room — which is exactly what CultureTechLens does. When we walk the floor in Rosemont, we will be photographing banners and reading them like texts, because they are texts. The question underneath every label is the same one Adrian Miller posed about soul food itself: who gets to name a cuisine, and who profits when the name changes?
Taste everything. Read the banners twice.
Sources
- Great Food Expo, "Chicago – Great Food Expo," official event page: "gourmet and ethnic foods," "small batch artisanal brands," "emerging artisans" (event's own marketing vocabulary). https://greatfoodexpo.com/chicago - Adrian Miller, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).
Chicago-style citation: CultureTechLens, "Soul Food Is Not a Trend: On Language, Labeling, and 'Artisanal'," September 30, 2026, culturetechlens.com.
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