Alas, the cost of being precious about food has also never been greater. Despite the vast advances in American food culture, the finest ingredients frequently must travel a great distance to arrive at your local Whole Foods: wines from Europe, California, and South America; Moroccan harissa and Thai fish sauce; South African guava juice; and pistachios from Turkey and Iran. (I know a place. ...) The best smoked salmon-the only one that will e'er darken a bagel in my house-arrives on the banks of the Hudson from distant Scotland, not nearby Nova Scotia.

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Some are trading down. Gourmands who swore by New York strip are now singing the praises of the more quotidian hanger steak. Having dinner the other night at an Italian restaurant, I noticed two couples ardently extolling the praises of the bottle of two-buck-chuck they had brought.

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But for many food snobs, trading down for everything is unacceptable. Any food snob worth his sel de mer can tick off a few products that he'd rather do without than switch to a cheaper alternative. Swapping the suddenly insanely expensive Italian buffalo mozzarella ($9.99 for 7 ounces) for the American stuff ($8.99 a pound) is like swapping front-row seats at the New York City Ballet for general admission to a community production of The Nutcracker. The reduction in quality is so significant that it renders the formerly sublime experience one not worth having at all.