Food Media

Yesterday, on Facebook, a friend of mine from high school commented about how you've "gotta love" Anthony Bourdain.

I don't.

I suppose I can appreciate the fact that his television show has increased awareness of the world's diversity of food. Unfortunately, it does this in a manner that often emphasizes the strangeness of food from other cuisines, but I'm willing to accept the fact that this is necessary to make the show as popular as it is. I also appreciate that he's done a lot to popularize the world's street food, something which, I think, has had some seriously good repercussions in American cities. I'll give him credit where it is due.

No, the reason that I don't love Anthony Bourdain is because he comes off as a jerk. I don't think I'm saying anything shocking here. I'm pretty sure that his career is based around being a jerk. It's like Seinfeld. I hated Seinfeld. I couldn't watch it. All of the main characters were horrible people. It wasn't a "show about nothing" - it was a show about people who regularly got involved in complicated schemes because they couldn't be open or honest with one of their best friends. It was a show about jerks.

Still, Seinfeld was extraordinarily popular. So is Bourdain. If Bourdain's career is based around him being a jerk, then it isn't based around him being a chef. He seems to rarely cook on television. In most of his books, with the exception of his Les Halles Cookbook(which had two coauthors), cooking seems incidental to drinking, mouthing off, and... well... being a jerk.

This is a man who has famously said (repeatedly) that the most disgusting thing he's ever eaten was a Chicken McNugget. While I can appreciate the point regarding processed food, the level of overstatement here is just an attempt to be inflammatory. Bourdain has lamented of eating such things as warthog anus. He was also a serious drug addict for some time. Who knows what the man has eaten. I can't imagine that a McNugget even ranks.

I've always found Bourdain's criticism of "celebrity chefs" to be incredibly hypocritical. He's often criticized food television personalities (in particular, Rachael Ray) for being manufactured celebrities and lacking culinary credentials. To the first point, Bourdain isn't famous for being a great chef. He is famous because of his book Kitchen Confidential- this is an exposé of what went on behind the scenes in the kitchens where Bourdain worked. It isn't a culinary masterpiece. The fact that he was a chef at all rather than, say, a busboy was really incidental to its success. To the second point, I've never been sure what it is that Rachael Ray does that has much to do with being a restaurant chef. Cooking at home for oneself and ones family is very different from being a professional chef. The two things require a very different set of skills. I'm also not sure what it is about Bourdain's stint as an executive chef that he thinks uniquely qualifies him to travel around the world and eat on television. Are executive chefs all professional eaters? Hardly.

In The Nasty Bits - a collection of essays by Bourdain - he admits that he wouldn't have gotten the behind the scenes access and special treatment that he now does back when he was merely executive chef at Les Halles and not a famous food celebrity.

What do we call someone who happily benefits from a condition while, at the same time, criticizing others for doing the same?