In a recent New York Times column, Frank Bruni reported on the feud between celebrity chefs Anthony Bourdain and Paula Deen. Though it’s been simmering for some time now, the tensions boiled over when the star of No Reservations told TV Guide that Deen was “the worst, most dangerous person to America. She revels in the unholy connections with evil corporations, and she’s proud of the fact that her food is f—g bad for you.”
In response, Deen told the New York Post that “Anthony Bourdain needs to get a life…. It’s not all about the cooking, but the fact that I can contribute by using my influence to help people all over the country. In the last two years, my partners and I have fed more than 10 million hungry people by bringing meat to food banks.” The host of Paula’s Home Cooking added, “not everybody can afford to pay $58 for prime rib or $650 for a bottle of wine. My friends and I cook for regular families who worry about the feeding their kids and paying the bills.”
It’s that last quip that got Bruni’s attention: “Her retort exposes class tensions in the food world that sadly mirror those in society at large,” he writes. “You can almost imagine Bourdain and Deen as political candidates, a blue-state paternalist squaring off against a red-state populist over correct living versus liberty in all its artery-clogging, self-destructive glory.”
And while Bruni agress with Bourdain regarding the nation’s excessive eating habits, he nonetheless defends Deen “in assailing the culinary aristocracy, to which even a self-styled bad boy like Bourdain belongs, for an often selective, judgmental and unforgiving worldview.”
Bruni elaborates,
When Deen fries a chicken, many of us balk. When the Manhattan chefs David Chang or Andrew Carmellini do, we grovel for reservations and swoon over the homey exhilaration of it all. Her strips of bacon, skirting pancakes, represent heedless gluttony. Chang’s dominoes of pork belly, swaddled in an Asian bun, signify high art.
All of which seems valid, though according to Bourdain, it misses the point. Responding on his blog, the chef uses the season finale of No Reservations (a trip to Louisiana) to make his point:
The many Cajuns who were good enough to host us on this Monday’s episode make this case, I think, far better than I ever could. Notice, when you watch the show, how everybody cooks. Men, women—even the kids seem to be helping out. Many aren’t cooks, per se, but everybody we met , everybody, was really, really good at at least one dish. Cajuns proudly trace their roots to a particularly harsh and brutal diaspora, followed by a steep learning curve as they adapted to an incredibly difficult new environment. Their culinary traditions reflect that.
Bourdain’s full response is far lengthier than this but is still worth reading. It also reminded me of my phone conversation with him from a few years ago. He was brutally frank and hilarious. For Bourdain fanatics, click here for the full transcript of our conversation.
