jasonspiro.com blog

Unanswered correspondence with British author:

Dear Mr Young,

[…] I don’t really “get” America’s fascination with food TV celebrities. I understand the attraction to chefs, respect for their skills, appreciation of their products. I love TC but I can’t say the same for the many food game shows.

Over there, the UK Restaurant Nightmares, and the F Word, are consistent, well planned, dimensional entertainment. Over here we should just call every show “Redneck Bingo.” Or “Redneck Bingo Bakesale” if it’s a food show. Even when your countrymen come over here to host, our participants make it an embarrassment. But I am not here to write bad jokes on the fly…

Nor am I here to tell you about myself, but as far as the fascination with the chef’s life goes: at thirty, reading Michael Ruhlman’s books, I thought I could pull it off. Me, a middle- to upper-middle class kid thinks, hey, I’ve always loved restaurants and my mom was a great cook. I ate at Moulin de Mougins! I will surely be understood in this filth pit. I know some successful career changers but I don’t know that I am one. Actually I love the business, I don’t know why I’m wasting your time with my self-pity.

What possesses me, or those people who auditioned for or participated in the Next Food Network Star, thinking, “I can win that cooking game show.” It is something to see a chef with meticulous planning and mental mise en place, running a crew, expediting, helping to execute a couple dozen recipes on a daily basis. It is something else to see un- or poorly- trained part-time cooks take a leave from their banking job or homemaking gig to run the gauntlet that a budget-constrained culinary producer deigns to design for a product-placement littered landscape of puketastic ingredients.

So we worship chefs. No problem. But cooks? It’s the new style. The typical home cook (or part time caterer, or private chef) couldn’t run a station with 30 tickets on the board, synchronize with the other stations, not burn anything and not run out of their own nicely done prep or pots and pans after a long day of multi-tasking, delegation, sweating, putting out fires… I guess I am saying it’s a little improbable that I, and my fellow would-be TV cooks will learn the very specific, myriad abilities of the chef, and be mature while working in or running a kitchen. Likewise these next Food Network TV stars are not likely to develop talent immediately–certainly they’ll be groomed and trained before they’re given a short-lived show.

This doesn’t ultimately address the topic, how are celebrity chef infatuations different from and similar to typical celebrity worship? Are chefs another form of hero in our culture?

[…] How can rage or disdain find unfortunate expression in the restaurant scene, among the dining public? Have you witnessed any brawls and why did they happen? Who do the misbehavers tend to be in UK dining, and why, if you have noticed any patterns at this or that type of establishment.

[…] I think in restaurant reviewing, professional ethics are particularly important. There are too many anonymous, snarky food bloggers who, lacking credentials, make up for inexperience with thoughtless smears. That type of internet resident could use a code of ethics. And, sadly, people eat that shit up. We love us some snark. What are some tenets of journalistic ethics that you’ve lived by and can you speak to the amateur blogger/food blogger debate?

[…] The gf is quick to point out the often homogenous makeup of the TC casts. Always with the white males, she might have remarked, and I can’t completely disagree. But for me, the weakness in casting is, I can tell who is in the bottom eight and the top five or six if not by the end of the first Quickfire then halfway through the first Elimination Challenge.

I’m sure there are more than a couple of TC cheftestants who rued the day they said “deconstructing” or “deconstructed” as part of a dish title or to describe a process. Naturally, I think of Derrida when people use the word deconstruction, but in a funny way because not just TC chefs but many many chefs misuse the term. (It’s getting so I may feel like a pedant for insisting on its proper use or that people say “archives” when describing an archives.) When a misguided chef appropriates the “deconstructing” something concept, and it remains so far afield from the real meaning or spirit–the dish can and usually does suffer. Like the difference between Eugene in S5 and Mike Voltaggio in S6–the ill-fated sushi dish during the wedding shower, vs. everything Mike did, is a way to illustrate the difference between breaking something down without reimagining it particularly well, and recomposition or reharmonization.

[…] Perhaps people conflate would-be food science people, with molecular practitioners, with flavor scientists, and with cooks whose menu writing is informed by post-modern concepts and styles of humor. This misconception about new nouvelle is reinforced by popular commercials that equate New American cuisine with pixie sized portions or elf food. In any case, there is a place for bleeding-edge cooks, I think, and it’s a good place that I like to visit whenever possible. Grant Achatz, Wylie Dufresne, Heston Blumenthal, Ferran Adria and his brother, and your own Top Chef Richard Blais… (as well as many others, and scores of pastry chefs) are exploring an exciting idiom, cooking good food, and hopefully contributing to good research and development for food scientists.

[…] Would mounting, as an exercise, an imaginary class-based attack on TK’s Per Se and French Laundry be worthwhile? He is not the best example, since Ducasse has run the most ridiculously opulent places around, but who is? Most chefs are not slumming dilettantes who just fell into 30 year careers. But supposing I made the argument that a rejection of middle-class values is a rejection of Thomas Keller’s style front and back of the house? I’m looking at the top guy in our country, probably the most well respected American chef, and just asking whether his focus on luxury all the way up to the point that he opened a Bouchon and then Ad Hoc, whether that was socially responsible even in light of his extraordinary ethics, and the way he puts his values into practice.

You were at Mandalay Bay. I appreciate what Rick Moonen is doing to bring awareness to aquaculture practices and who to buy fish from. Is sustainability in aquaculture and agriculture—or shopping locally and being aware of a supermarket’s carbon footprint—of much concern for people of the UK or for you? Or supporting good fishermen, farmers, local butchers? Does anything about the trendiness of going green amuse you? Based on my viewing of Nuts In May I’d say your general population has been concerned about organic farming for longer than ours.

[…] Thanks again for your time.

Best,
Jason