As I was telling my partner the other night, I spent part of my boyhood in a rural area and people absolutely had opinions about food there. The authorities they cited weren't Julia Child or Justin Wilson but revered relatives or people known in the local community. Every corn grower was convinced he knew the best variety of sweet corn for eating and the best way to cook it, but he might be too modest or retiring to get into a dispute over it.

Not all "working class" or "lower class" people are as alienated from the source of their food as your typical post-industrial city-dweller, and you don't have to be "middle class" to have a strong opinion on which fry shack has the best fried chicken or which smokehouse has the best barbecue.