Cross posted from Street Prophets
I confess to foodie tendancies – I love to prepare food for friends and family, over the years I have collected cookbooks (a.k.a. “food porn”) and I like watching cooking and travel shows on TV. I believe that much can be learned about people from how and what they eat – and that, in fact, the first dinner table (which may have been a skin on the floor of a cave) was humankind’s first altar - where blessings were asked for the food and all sharing it. How the career of Anthony Bourdain escaped my attention until recently is a mystery to me but I’ve been making up for lost time by greedily reading his written work and catching up on all his television programs. Handsomely aging hipster, snarkmeister, Ramones fan and unrepentant consumer of meat, beer, and (until recently when the birth of his first child prompted him to quit) cigarette after cigarette, he is also a classically trained chef associated with the fine New York restaurant, Les Halles.
He also has an authentic literary voice, one so distinctive that the success of his first book, Kitchen Confidential, propelled him from a life behind a stove to a life of airports, numerous destinations far and near, and television cameras following his every quest for “the good stuff”.
I think people who are buying into the rightwing propaganda about immigration nightmares need to watch Tony Bourdain’s show, No Reservations. They need to watch it a lot. Before things get worse. It’s a funny, ultra hip, informative and enriching show. It’s also very educational in ways one does not expect from a food and travel show. Among other things, they will learn (in as entertaining a manner as possible):
* That countries that welcome immigrants benefit from their cuisine – and it is delicious. Embracing other cultures brings many, many other benefits, as well.
Treatment of immigrants is a reflection of the nature of a country.
* Those who do not enjoy the contributions of immigrants do not get the “good stuff” – no, they get boring, tasteless food. They get boring sameness, generally. Among other downsides, it is hard to achieve cool under these conditions.
* In fine restaurants here in the U.S., the people cooking the food are not the celebrity chefs whose names are on the door – they are more likely to come from Mexico, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala or some such place from below our southern border. These guys work very, very hard and without them there would be little fine dining in this country.
* Friends are made and understanding increased around a table. And lives are often made or remade in a kitchen.
* Walls between people are not good. What was bad in Berlin will be terrible between the U.S. and Mexico.
About that last point, if a person who is afraid of brown-skinned immigrants watches only one Bourdain No Reservations show, let it be the one he made about the area of the U.S./Mexico border, the cities on either side of it, and the people in either country whose lives are twined together, culturally, financially, and by blood. Bourdain shows throngs of Americans buying cheap pharmaceuticals in Mexico, border enforcement officials from both countries showing him a length of the Rio Grande by boat (and complaining about the illogic of putting a wall along it), and the terrible strain on families that our immigration laws are causing. it is clear from watching this episode that the people calling loudest for a wall are not well familiar with the border area and certainly do not live there. The program is eye opening, frank, and yet a tender and respectful treatment of the people on both sides of the Rio Grande. It might just open some hearts and minds.
There is no doubt that Anthony Bourdain is cool and, watching him, one wants that coolness to rub off. The impetus to see things with Tony Bourdain's clear vision and respect for people is real. What he says and what he shows will doubtless have at least some impact on the most unfortunately nativist of our countrymen. If the salty speech does not put them off I don't think nativists will be able to resist this particular voice. Hey, he even admits when he's wrong and makes it look easy.
For more on the third point listed above, I refer to Tony Bourdain’s own words (snark about our women and all) from his book, The Nasty Bits (pp 44-5) – where he is a bit more pointed than perhaps he can be on television:
As I’ve said many times, I can teach people to cook. I can’t teach character. And my comrades from Mexico and Ecuador have been some of the finest characters I’ve known in twenty-eight years as a cook and as a chef. I am privileged, made better, by having known and worked with many of them. I am honored by their hard work, their toil, and their loyalty. I am enriched by their sense of humor, their music, their food, their not-so-nice names for me behind my back, their kindness, and their strength. They have shown me what real character is. They have made this business – the “Hospitality Industry” – what it is, and they keep its wheels grinding forward.
It was once said that this is the land of the free. There is, I believe, a statue out there in the harbor, with something written on it about “Give me your hungry…your oppressed…give me pretty much everybody” – that’s the way I remember it, anyway. The idea of America is a mutt-culture, isn’t it? Who the hell is America if not everybody else? We are – and should be – a big, messy, anarchistic polyglot of dialects and accents and different skin tones. Like our kitchens. We need more Latinos to come here. And they should, whenever possible, impregnate our women.
Lately, things have changed…a little. The off-the-books, below-minimum-wage illegal has to some extent disappeared from view, at least in the good restaurants I worked in. The strata of Latino labor has enlarged to include sauté, grill, and even sous-chef positions. But you don’t see too many chefs of French or Italian or even “New American” restaurants with a last name like Hernandez or Perez or Garcia. Owners, it seems, still shrink from having a mestizo-looking chef swanning about the dining room of their two – or three-star French eatery – even if the candidate richly deserves the job. Language skills are not the issue. Chances are, Mexicans or Ecuadorians speak English a hell of a lot better than most Americans speak Spanish (or French for that matter). It’s…well…we know what it is, don’t we?
It’s racism, pure and simple.
However, somebody walks his talk -- and no doubt had some influence with a certain restaurant owner. Tony Bourdain is no longer Executive Chef at Les Halles. His toque has been passed to Carlos Llaguno. Carlos was so gracious when Tony and the TV cameras came into his kitchen for the most recent episode, "Into the Fire NY", of No Reservations. The whole world has now seen that that kitchen is in Carlos' expert hands -- and the episode in question was a beautiful (and amusing -- at the aging Tony's expense) way to introduce Carlos Llaguno and his team to a wider audience.
Tony, you model by example -- probably more than you know. Bravo! Next stop: U.N. Goodwill Ambassador. (Hey, let's dream that into reality!)