Corduroy Orange

The “Chef as Rock Star” analogy never seemed quite so apt as when Anthony Bourdain stepped onto the stage at the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland to tumultuous applause and hoots and hollers from the sold-out house. An extremely slender man, he was dressed aggressively casual in skinny jeans worn over cowboy boots and a collared shirt with the top 2 buttons undone. He shunned the podium and paced back and forth across the front of the stage as he gave his talk; it took a few minutes for the spotlight operator to get the appropriate light switched on and illuminate Mr. Bourdain.

I really don’t know what I expected Mr. Bourdain to say, but I’m pretty sure he caught everyone off guard when he opened his lecture by saying, “I don’t think Rachael Ray likes me. I think she’s trying to kill me. I suspect she killed my dog.” But in an instant, any ice was shattered and Mr. Bourdain set off on a very conversational exploration of what it means to be a TV food personality and a reexamination of some of the tenets he set forth in his 2000 book, Kitchen Confidential.

The lecture began, of course, with Mr. Bourdain’s take on the Food Network. “Why am I so bitter about the people on the Food Network?” he asked, “I used to work for them….” I’m not really privy to the details of his departure from the channel, but I know plenty of people who are bitter about their former employers. That theory aside, Mr. Bourdain named some of his objections: “Rachel Ray says she’s not a chef. She’s right. [...] What’s Al Roker doing on the Food Network? He’s got his stomach stapled!”

But really, when he boiled everything down, it turns out that his main objection to the state of the FN is that the shows don’t inspire the average person to attempt anything new with their cuisine, don’t instruct as much as they display. As I already mentioned, Mr. Bourdain compared the channel to pornography: “watching people do things on the screen that you will probably never do on your own.”

He was really quite unabashed about the fact that his show amounts to pretty much the same state of affairs. “I have the best job in the world!” he exulted, “I get to go anywhere in the world, eat and drink to excess, make self-indulgent TV about it, and I get paid for it.” [cue the audience's cheers and whistles]. Though most chefs will never obtain the celebrated status that Mr. Bourdain has gained, he believes that the entire industry has benefited from food’s celebration on the small screen. “What’s new is the glamour and the prestige.” Today, people are fascinated with what goes on in the kitchen, whereas “in ‘75 if you went to meet your girlfriend’s family and said that you were planning on being a chef, you’d might as well have said that you wanted to be the lighting director in the next Ron Jeremy film.”

I’ve got to say, from my perspective, he’s completely right. When I meet people for the first time, or even after I’ve known people for a while, conversations tend to gravitate toward food: where it comes from, how it’s prepared, meals that people have had and enjoyed, the skinny on what goes on in the back of the house at restaurants…. But a good meal is probably the most pleasurable thing you can sell someone without risking running afoul of the law. And everybody has to eat, but not everybody gets to eat well, so it’s only natural that those who appreciate good food are going to want tips from someone, anyone who can help them eat better more often. It was my desire to be able to cook [and eat] as well as possible that led to my career in the kitchen.

It was enjoyable to hear Mr. Bourdain describe some of his experiences in the kitchen, if only because I had a similar perspective on things: hollandaise, for example—”I like hollandaise, I like bearnaise,” said Mr. Bourdain, “but I like getting it shortly after it’s made.” and truth be told, most kitchens make a batch at the beginning of the shift and hold it straight through the end, often at room temperature, rather than making several smaller batches as the day/night progresses, as best practices would dictate—but when the middle of the rush hits and you’ve got 150 or more people all waiting for their food, there’s just not time to make sauces, you’ve got to cook and that’s all there is to it. I still order things with hollandaise on them, but I do it knowing full well the sauce’s likely age and condition.

Other descriptions were interesting because he’s been in situations that I haven’t, such as visiting a farm in Vietnam where they killed their duck and cooked it in honor of their American guest. “This is what irritates me about vegetarians,” was Mr. Bourdain’s summation. “If you’re lucky enough to travel this world to countries where they’ve been cooking better than us for thousands of years… you owe it not just to your host to be a good guest, but to yourself [to try what has been prepared]. We only have so much time on this planet. To find yourself in Thailand and not eat everything in sight shows an incredible lack of curiosity.”

Which isn’t to say that Mr. Bourdain seeks out unusual things to try intentionally. For instance, cats and dogs. “I like dogs,” he explained. “I’m not going to look for dog or cat—but if I find myself in the Mekong Delta and I’m surprised by a big tray of steaming puppy heads, given the choice between that and offending my host, I’d like to think, ‘pass the Fluffy.’”

As far as Mr. Bourdain’s opinion on Pittsburgh’s food culture, Mr. Bourdain was unfortunately ignorant as to all the great options we’ve got here. Asked what he had for dinner, he apologized, saying that his travel schedule was so demanding his dinner had been a can of Pringles and a Red Bull.

Someone had obviously prepped him on one of the city’s dining options, though. He knew about Primanti’s. He asked if the fries and the cole slaw were really on the sandwich. He said that he just might have to come back to Pittsburgh if we eat things like that to do a show on the city [cue extremely loud cheers form the audience].

I just hope that if he does return to the city, he probes a bit deeper than the already well-publicized Primanti sandwiches and focuses on some of our lesser-known regional treasures: the variety of mom-and-pop charcuteries, the lesser-known restaurants, the chocolatiers, the belt of agricultural land that surrounds the city where, if you know where to look, you can find just about anything fresh from the farm. (I, of course, would be glad to serve as a scouting consultant to help him out in this regard).

Too many of the questions were from what Mr. Bourdain described as the “alcoholic kitchen worker segment of the audience” and consisted of variations on the questions, “come drinking with us tonight?”, “Let me cook for you,” and “what’s your favorite music?” but one question I was glad somebody asked was, “What did you eat growing up?”

“Meatloaf,” said Mr. Bourdain. Or, on special occasions, his mom would make roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. “She had some Julia Child dishes, she did well, but it didn’t lead to me being a chef.” Rather, he describes falling in love with the lifestyle first, “living like Tommy Lee without playing the guitar,” and the love for food came later. And the popularity and rock star status came after that. “Who better to be celebrated than our chefs?” asked Mr. Bourdain at one point during the lecture.

Personally, I’d love to see some rock star farmers.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 9:49 am and is filed under Pittsburgh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.