johnnyhongkong says…

Salon has a great interview with globetrotting, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, who I had an affinity for even before I found out that he too “misspent” his youth at Vassar (at least he got out).

You’ll need a subscription to read the article or you can watch a brief commercial to get the Day Pass but it’s worth it as Bourdain lets loose with his usual searing frankness on Rachael Ray, being proven wrong, rude vegans, the problems with food safety, and still other stuff he gets salty about.

In light of the posts on my battle with Whole Foods and my ongoing struggle with Carmen Santa Rosa about veganism, here’s a little amusee trio for your hungry yeux:

You’ve never had much love for vegans, and that doesn’t seem to be something you’ve revised your opinion on.

Never. They’re rude! People’s choice to become vegan, from people I’ve spoken to, seems motivated by fear. Like, “it’s possibly toxic, or ungroovy, or poisonous, or loaded with chemicals or some kind of harmful things that’ll make me less healthy.” I certainly don’t see that as a good reason to do anything, certainly not a good reason to be rude to your host.

How can you travel? Before you’ve even left home, you’ve already decided, “I reject most of the world’s bounty and the expression of their hopes and dreams and culture.” Some nice, possibly impoverished Vietnamese rice farmer is nice enough to offer you the one chicken he can kill a month, or a week, and you say, “Sorry, I can’t”? It just seems antihuman. It’s antisocial.

And for anyone who says that everyone should eat like that — it completely ignores the fact that, well, we can’t afford to. We’ve got hungry people in this world. Go stay with the Bushmen for a week. Ninety-eight percent of their diet is meat. [Chuckles darkly.] That would be a funny reality show.

[snip]

You’ve spoken out against the recent bans on foie gras, but you’re also opposed to animal cruelty in general. Would you support banning other practices that are regarded as cruel, like those practiced by the industrial poultry industry?

No. It would be nice to think that people know the difference between a crap chicken and a good chicken. If you can afford a good-quality free-range chicken, it’s nice that you have options. A lot of people in the world can’t afford that.

I like the idea that we could live in an agrarian wonderland, where there are heritage animals wandering freely and making delicious farm-fresh eggs, but that ain’t gonna happen; there are too many hungry people in the world.

I love Whole Foods talking about lobster and clam cruelty, when people are being fucked to death, kidnapped, starved, bombed. [The grocery chain recently stopped selling some live shellfish on the grounds that the practice is inhumane.] There is so much cruelty to humans — so much cruelty to animals — in this world. And people are worried about a fucking mollusk. Unbelievable.

[snip]

You also suggest that the relentless focus on safety and sanitation in kitchens is a bad thing. Why?

I think fear of dirt is often indistinguishable from the fear of unnamed dirty people. There’s something kind of racist about it, about people who are hesitant to try street food in another country. [The food] is part and parcel of culture; it’s an expression of identity.

And I think the notion that the government or somebody owes you absolute safety and security in everything you eat is a destructive one, with cheese being the easiest example. With cheese having to be pasteurized or aged to a certain degree, none of us will ever experience a real brie, or how good that used to be. There are laws that you have to sign a release, or at least read a warning statement, before you eat a rare burger. I think we’ve slipped over into the twilight zone here. Does McDonald’s really have to label their coffee cups to say “Danger: Will cause burning if poured on genitals”?

I think it’s destructive to quality, and pleasure, and tradition. So I’m skeptical, to say the least, if not hostile to that kind of thinking.