If you are reading this then you are almost certainly interested in food and eating out but would you call yourself a foodie?

That’s the crux of a debate that has got readers of The Oregonian up in arms.

Lee Williams has written a piece in which he has a gentle dig at trendy, hipster cafes, restaurants and barista bars in Portland while bigging up the area’s less fashionable but dependable chain restaurants and homely diners.

As you might imagine, it has lit the touch paper on an argument whose ferocity would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

One the one hand are the ‘foodies’ who want to firebomb any restaurant that sells chickens that weren’t given a first name and private schooling before being sent to slaughter.

On the other hand, there are plenty of Portlanders eager to lambast ‘elitist’ restaurants and coffee shop assistants who can make a Mona Lisa in latte foam but can’t crack a smile to save themselves.

Interestingly, the actual article is fairly mild in tone and points out more than a handful of similarities between some of the food sold by the fashionable places and that sold by the less celebrated restaurants.

As ever, the comments are less even-handed.

Mr Williams has also written a sidebar titled You might be a foodie if. . .

Not all of the suggestions work but I did like ‘You might be a foodie if your dog’s food dish is a charcuterie board’.

What do you think? Do decent, dependable restaurants get overlooked by the latest, flash bang joints that have a decent PR company and a big design budget or are the hip places popular because they have the right approach?

Which restaurants do you think get overlooked?