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There's an episode of Friends that nails the fundamental silliness of foodie culture. Phoebe is nostalgically reminiscing about grandma's cookies, Monica is trying to techbro-reverse-engineer it from Phoebe's description. Turns out to be nestle-tollhouse wrapper recipe.
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What makes the joke funny is the idea that an industrial mass-production process that strives to squeeze out all local variation might produce its own terroir. Which as it happens, is true. Cf: green-bean casserole.
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part of an essay about green bean casserole and midwestern identity
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"The most excellent cookie" is always consistently the same, while "the most interesting cookie" (not tasty, interesting, as in the connoisseur's idea of the bleeding edge of cookieness) is a moving target driven by increasing understanding and sensitivity to nuances.
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You could reverse this. Excellence requires experimentation (trial and filtering of the results) to find anything of sufficient worth. Six-sigma mediocrity isn't excellent. Tastefulness requires that you don't make big blunders, which are common in experimentation.
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