Cult of Celebrity

Celebrity chefs.  This is culturally a very new phenomenon.  Twenty years ago, a person would be hard-pressed to produce the name of any celebrity chef, and most of those who could would cite Julia Child, who wasn't and never claimed to be a chef.  Sure, there were a few cooking shows, such as the Galloping Gourmet (Graham Kerr) and the Frugal Gourmet (Jeff Smith), and whatever might be available on local access, none of whom could fill a book signing with young, hip foodies all dying for a Kodak moment to flash around to their friends.  Chefs have become our newest category of celebrity.

I remember.  It wasn't that long ago, that the only cooking show available was James Barber's Urban Peasant, whose annoyingly catchy yet sappy and wildly optimistic theme song used to get stuck in my head for hours at a  time.  I watched the show because there were no other cooking shows to watch, even though I disliked it intensely enough to have actually lobbed pillows at the television while watching him go about his messy, ugly, sloppy cooking.

When the Food Network arrived, I was ecstatic.  I didn't quite know what to expect, other than 24 hour food preparation, and I was looking forward to it immensely.  I watched everything they had, for days on end, repeats and all.  So many shows, so much better than what I had been watching.  Suddenly, there were celebrity chefs everywhere, endorsing everything.  Eventually, I became rather picky about the shows.  I stopped watching the ones that I found irritating, and I developed standards about what I would make time to watch, although if I were bored enough I'd still watch just about anything.  Eventually, the bright smiles and cheerful aprons gave a sort of sameness to most of the offerings, and I started to care a lot less about the Food Network.

Salvation, as it were, arrived first in the form of Alton Brown's show, "Good Eats" which perked me right up again.  The science geek meets the food nerd.  I was thrilled, and while some episodes miss their comedic mark, I still make time to watch his show whenever possible.  The next show to give me hope was Anthony Bourdain's "A Cook's Tour."  I was all set to dislike it, for reasons that I can't really remember.  The ads, maybe, struck me as a touch smug and somewhat pretentious.  I did check it out, though, and rapidly became hooked.  I particularly enjoyed the film noir approach to the cinematography - such a difference from the brightly lit, spotless studio kitchens of Emeril or Cooking Live, or the earnest Canadian equivalents.  Plus, Bourdain was funny, in a dry, self-effacing way, often at his own expense.  His deep love of food became evident, despite the cigarettes, and his very real respect for the folks on the frontlines of the kitchens of the world is something that is touching and not in evidence in a lot of other TV chefs.  His rather rakish and somewhat depraved-sounding personal history of drugs, booze and crazy behaviour gave him a sort of bad boy image that, coupled with his scorn for vegetables and his fondness for strong drink, struck a chord with the inner rebel in a lot of people.

Bourdain came to Vancouver recently on the initial leg of his book-tour for The Les Halles Cookbook - from  the New York restaurant where he is Executive Chef.   It was an interesting evening, if not quite the star-studded gala one would anticipate.  Seems the chefs of the town got to him first, for an evening of "savage drinking" and good food the night before, which left the official event full of enthusiastic foodies and giddy media-types.  The first of two events took place at Elixir, a fairly upscale French restaurant in the Opus Hotel.  The staff were friendly, but disorganized and confused about seating arrangements; the space was not ideal - quite crowded and awkwardly arranged with two separate rooms for seating, and a special signing room where Bourdain was signing books.  I was grateful to be seated in the room where the band was not performing, for reasons both logistical and musical.

It was necessary to flag down staff with some force in order to get in on the food.  Samples from the Les Halles Cookbook were being passed around, but our corner of the restaurant was apparently easy to overlook.  We missed the brandade de morue entirely, which was a pity, but in a fit of compensation we were given extras of the French onion soup (which I wrongly speculated had sherry in it - it's actually port.  And bacon.) and snails - garlicky, tender little snails in the best tradition of French cookery.  This was followed by gherkin-topped country pâté on little toasts.  By the time we decided to get into the signing line-up, the serving staff seemed rather desperate to unload the pâté hors d'oeuvres - the crowd had thinned and the service disorganized enough that they had a sudden wealth of pâté toast to dispose of.  I greedily ate four of them, because they kept bringing them around, and because I was irritated at missing out on the brandade.

The second event, at Bar None, was marginally more interesting because the guest of honour was able to give a little speech, and mingle a little instead of being chained to the signing desk.  However, the venue itself  - never all that great - has become nothing more than an expensive dive.  Couches are prodigiously stained and partially melted from what I can only hope were carelessly wielded cigarettes.  No beer on tap, only ridiculously priced bottles of Heineken (that I could see), wine and cocktails.  To my surprise, I knew the bartender - which meant that I got a decently made bourbon Manhattan in a real glass.  Despite the aura of desperation that I didn't expect to leak in until after the bar had opened up to its usual clientele, it was an interesting space for the function.  Certainly Bourdain himself doesn't seem out of place in a grungy bar - anyone who has seen "A Cook's Tour" knows that he doesn't require swanky surroundings.

The event tickets came with a copy of the cookbook.  It is funny, very well written, and well worth getting.  Bourdain frequently disrupts his own narrative to berate the reader (who is assumed to be a rookie cook on the brink of committing atrocious mistakes) but in an entertaining and not unsympathetic manner.  The recipes all look devastatingly useable, and the commentary frequently makes me burst out laughing.  The urge to read aloud to whomever is in the room with you, or at least snicker out loud, is overwhelming.  Even the glossary at the back is funny and entertaining.  Besides, any cookbook banned in some communities (but not by Wal-Mart, as I'd heard) for profanity throughout the recipes has got some sort of fearlessness going for it.  Mostly, though, the language is frank and direct, the instructions clear, the equipment lists useful and the recipes impressively straight-forward.

The man himself?  Tall, as tall as he seems on TV, a bit gangling, and smells depressingly of cigarettes.  Charming, though, and gracious.  He seemed unfazed by the cameras or the tequila shooters fans were buying for him.  I guess they all wanted to say they "did a shot with Bourdain."  One of the guys in front of me in the signing line asked to have his book signed "to the dirty kitchen boy."  My imagination was still reeling by the time I got to the front of the line.  I had thought of several clever things to say entirely independent of that mental image but, thank goodness, had the sense not to actually utter them.

I wonder what he would have had to say about the TV cameras interviewing random women on the topic of Bourdain's alleged sexiness.  One of whom, I'm sad to report, described him as "like, all-knowing!"  This is what happens when your interviewees are both vapid and drunk, I suppose.  No comments about his ability to communicate his passion for food, or his willingness to write with the courage of his convictions.    If I have to hear one more clueless parrot refer to him as the "rock 'n' roll chef" I may just toss my cookies.

I remain a huge fan.

November 2004