This illustrates a point that is common in many cultures. A fair number (but by no means all) of rich people have this tendency to show off that they are rich as publicly as possible. Get two such individuals together and they'll try to one up each other in their conspicuous displays of wealth. Sometimes this can produce magnificent works of art, other times the best thing that can be said about it is that it keeps money in circulation. This manifests itself in a wide variety of ways from fancy pants clothes, cars, homes and food. In extreme examples this gets downright farsical. In Ancient Rome the elite of the eternal city would eat dishes of peacock tongues and would buy animals who died in the arena for meat. This was not because these foods were tasty but because they were foreign and exotic. In modern times this attitude persists, most notably in eatable gold...
...there is zero nutritional value or taste in gold and indeed it in large quantities it is toxic, even so eating gold is considered a sign of wealth and so people with more money than brains eat the stuff.
On the other end of the spectrum there are schools of thought which are called "Peasant Dishes" in France and "The Kitchen of Poverty" in Italy. Basically imagine some pre-industrial farming family with a small plot of land and a vegetable garden. They can't afford a lot of fancy pants ingredients but they can grow things and get their hands on odds and ends, which they get good of making the most out of. For example in France they might have some beef or chicken stock, some onions, a few cloves of garlic, a couple leaves off the bay tree as well as some stale bread and leftover cheese. A little creativity and culinary experimentation and you got French Onion Soup.
Likewise in southern Italy they work out that with some basic bread dough, basil, leftover cheese and sausage and the fruits from that new tomato plant they could make this...
...basically a lot of very good dishes that are well loved today around the world had their start with poor trying to make a presentable meal with what they had on hand. All of which are far better than eating expensive crap simply because it is expensive.
Zor
