ABSTRACT
The popular culture domain of the foodie sphere is one of the central arenas to achieve social status and display distinction in today’s Western society. According to Bourdieu, socio-political conditions appear in discourse in a sublimated form, where illusiobecomes an important concept to understand the sublimation process. In the foodie culture, like in other marketplace cultures, illusio is emotionally granted by the social magic of its authorized speakers, in this case by its celebrity chefs. Among the hundreds of people and around 50 interviewed foodie consumers and foodie entrepreneurs that we talked with during the last decade, celebrity chefs were always used as a source of inspiration and a reference for identification or de-identification. The chefs testify of a history with food that goes back to childhood, and almost like tiny Christ children it has been their fate to serve the higher purpose that they have been bestowed with.
