You most definitely can separate the fashionable, and status-seeking aspects out from urban culture.
I live in Canada. The traditional cuisine is bland, and fresh produce grows only a few months of the year. I see my love of sushi as a product of globalization and urbanization as much as is my ability to get decent fruit from the grocery store in the heart of winter. Sure I could have a root cellar and eat potatoes and beef all winter, but sushi is delicious.
It cannot be just status. High demand and low supply has a tendency to price the best cultural products in high status territory.
Somehow this reminds me of the history of lobster as cheap food for the poor and imprisoned. People detested it. Until of course the status of lobster changed.
Or the fact aluminium used to be extremely expensive and thus used for the most precious cutlery, ornaments etc. Until of course it became dirt cheap to produce.
Some things really are related to the ideas we hold, not reality itself. You can see this in blind tests of foods or drinks like wines, the blind ratings often don't correspond with their reputation or price.
Bourdieu's book la distinction is quite a good treatise on this topic. Taste and what we consider artful or high quality is much more constructed by our environment than by any innate or objective measure, we tend to fool ourselves on this point.
I live in Canada. The traditional cuisine is bland, and fresh produce grows only a few months of the year. I see my love of sushi as a product of globalization and urbanization as much as is my ability to get decent fruit from the grocery store in the heart of winter. Sure I could have a root cellar and eat potatoes and beef all winter, but sushi is delicious.
It cannot be just status. High demand and low supply has a tendency to price the best cultural products in high status territory.