Warhol lived between two food worlds. On one side, the America of mass consumption: the midday lunch counter, the assembly-line can opener, the soda fountain and the drive-in — a standardized food, identical for everyone, which he elevated into an icon. On the other, the table of his Pittsburgh childhood: the Carpatho-Rusyn kitchen of his mother Julia, a Greek Catholic immigrant, with her dumplings and her Christmas Eve supper (Sviata Vecheria). Warhol's menu is this great divide between the printed label and the handmade gesture.

Warhol's totem object: the industrial product, identical from one end of the country to the other, which he transformed into a work of art. Canned soup is his madeleine and his manifesto — the democracy of taste, where the president drinks the same Coke as the tramp.