Because pretty food is the same. I am a chef and there is a connection between the permanence (or lack thereof) of food and street art. When the culture of graffiti I grew up with died out at end of the ’80s, I longed for something as sublime and as useless as spraying art on a wall. I found it on a porcelain plate in a French kitchen. I found a tribe of derelicts who were unhinged and passionate and nocturnal. There is an insanity to the number of hours spent over a stove to create a plate of food that will disappear in mere minutes. It’s not logical. But we do it anyway. We live for the few people out there who will truly get it. It means the world to us. To the rest of society , we are as anonymous as that fool who scrawled an illegible word on the back of a subway car.

Edward Lee, the author of “Buttermilk Graffiti” and “Smoke & Pickles,” is the chef and owner of 610 Magnolia, MilkWood and Whiskey Dry in Louisville, Kentucky, and the culinary director of Succotash in National Harbor, Maryland, and Penn Quarter in Washington, D.C. He earned an Emmy nomination for his role in the series “The Mind of a Chef” and, most recently, he wrote and hosted the feature documentary “Fermented.” He is on Instagram and Twitter @chefedwardlee