Problem Statement

In cuisine, there are some dishes that are fit for kings and some fit for peasants (historically, at least). For example, stews were originally peasant food because poor quality meats could be masked in the heavy sauce. On the other hand, macarons used to be upper class food because the almond flour involved, the high failure rate, and the precision in temperature needed to bake the shells make them more expensive to produce.
What is interesting to consider is the progressive blurring of the socioeconomic divides in the culinary world. Haute cuisine is embracing ingredients and techniques that used to be frowned upon (e.g. Spam). Low brow cuisine is embracing organic, fresh, and consequently more expensive ingredients. We still have the old-school accolades such as the much revered Michelin star, but we also have new forms of recognition such as Diners, Drive-In’s, and Dives and a 4.5-5 star Yelp rating.
What I would like to investigate is the extent of the blurring between the high and low culinary worlds. Are fancy and casual dining actually finding common ground, or are there still fancy dishes and casual ones? I propose we build a tool that will help us answer this question.

Approach

I would like to build a visualization tool that will allow people to see the relative frequency of a certain main ingredient/dish in the dining scene, so they can see how common certain dishes are given a certain price range. The tool would allow the user to search for an ingredient or dish and see the relationship between cost and frequency over the years. It would also allow the user to see a breakdown of the most common dishes in high and low brow cuisine over the years.
The information will be gleaned from online menus and Yelp/Locu data.

Audience

The audience for this project would consist of food critics/enthusiasts and food historians.

Skills Needed

Web scraping, UI design, data visualization

Project Pitch