Recently New York Magazine came out with an article about so-called "West Village girls" [1]. For anyone unfamiliar, the West Village (and Greenwich Village more broadly) is a part of Manhattan below 14th street that had huge cultural significance int eh 20th century. Many musicians, artists and luminaries lived there for a time. It was the home of the Stonewall riots [2] and is otherwise important to LGTBQ culture.
The West Village girl is pretty much the opposite of all those things. Basic, typically white, posts on IG that "I can't live without my Starbuck's", dresses generically, is chasing her Sex and the City dream, is likely supported by her parents in her 20s after graduating college (if not outright having a trust fund) and probably has hobbies like "travel" and "eating out".
There is a long history of a certain kind of (typically white) people who are devoid of "culture" and move to a place and make it worse by not respecting that culture, like moving above a Mexican restaurant or a bar that's been there for 40 years and geting it shut down for noise. That sort of thing.
This segment is typically obsessed with finding "the best", seeing and being seen at the "best" or just the "hippest" places and so on.
I saw a thing recently about people who travel for an hour plus to find the "best" New York slice. The particular creator explained that these chasers just don't get the point. The point is that you can get good slices pretty much anywhere in NYC. It's ubiquitous. You just don't need to line up for 2 hours at some hole-in-the-wall in Queens or whatever.
And now I'll bring it back to soy sauce.
This seems to fit this obsession of finding or having "the best". For me, the difference between "good" and "the best" for pretty much anything is so marginal that it's never worth paying a huge premium, going terribly out of your way and/or waiting for a long time. That goes for restaurants, food items, wine and pretty much anything.
But every time I see people who obsess over "the best" it always strikes me as so sad, like these chasers just have to have the external validation of being "in the club". I particularly see this with people who are obsessed with Japan, like they look for the absolute best sushi, omikase or whatever but again, I think the point of Japan is you can find good of anything Japanese everywhere, because it's Japan.
I'm happy there are craftsmen who take pride in their craft and their output, be they Japanese teapot makers, calligraphy brush makers or soy sauce producers. And if you get a chance to try such things and appreciate their craft, great. But chasing it always seems so empty.
[1]: https://www.thecut.com/article/nyc-west-village-neighborhood...