So-called tasting
menus
are alternately vilified and lionized in
Anthony Bourdain
’s most recent book,
Medium Raw
. But then, Bourdain’s book is a back-and-forth, thoroughly wishy-washy ride—smart and painfully funny but, as promised by the title, it’s not rare or well-done. It’s medium through and through.
The strangest part of Medium Raw is Bourdain’s repeated claim that he is baffled by the success of the book that launched his celebrity,
Kitchen Confidential
, which he claims to have written for the niche audience of those who toil without recognition in the Manhattan service industry. But that book touched sore nerves all service workers can feel, and most customers for that matter. It’s Bourdain’s new book, aggressively launched to the public at large, that is truly written for a freakishly small audience of starfuckers, ashamed foodies and the kind of people who are in a position to debate the merits of 20-course tasting meals.
Bourdain dedicates a single, lackluster chapter made up of his laziest prose to the American food system’s need for an overhaul and to an obligatory nod at the social injustice of the status quo, before he returns to the vigorous, wildly enthused business of being jaded by
Michelin Star
-dining. Twenty courses, Bourdain says, are too many, whereas nine are wholly reasonable. But only because the extra 11 leave one too gassy and bloated to enjoy post-culinary coitus. An end-of-the-Roman-Empire kind of observation if there ever were one: “Now that I’m done gorging myself on rare and expensive food that I didn’t personally pay for, I really want to screw, but I’m just too tired.”
There’s a moving, if contrived, account of Bourdain temporarily rescuing fish cleaner Justo Thomas from the bowels of
Le Bernardin
up to the dining room so that the Dominican-born kitchen help could experience the gluttony that his amazing knife skills enable. But Thomas will, we know, return to cleaning and portioning 700 to 900 fish the following day and for the rest of his life.
As far as celebrities go, Bourdain isn’t a bad one. His writing is fluid and intelligent, if more disjointed than any editor would tolerate from a less-famous name. He’s always good in an interview or a television show, and he appears to genuinely care about the state of food and the people who work with it. Basically, he’s Sean Penn in the kitchen. But he’s still a celebrity and, in a world where food celebrities are multiplying like fast-food franchises, his latest effort doesn’t give us much of a reason to care.
The book is structured around the well-placed insult, the page-turning predicated on whom Bourdain will next call a douchebag. It’s clear that he’s tired of it, but he more or less admits to being powerless. Chef
Emeril Lagasse
, he points out, has to keep selling out to increasingly ridiculous product endorsements because he now supports an entire company made up of people who make a living off his celebrity. The implication is that we shouldn’t blame Bourdain for profiting by calling
Alice Waters
an annoying, dipshit hippy despite agreeing with everything she says. After all, he’s got to sell books somehow.
And we don’t blame him because he is too damn funny to hate. But we’re also aware, if only dimly, that Waters is doing something beneficial in the world with her celebrity. She, too, supports many families on the brand her name has become, but she’s not hawking pans and products; she’s railing for a better world and usually in concrete, rather than dipshit hippy, ways. Bourdain, meanwhile, is just railing. He’s great company for watching the world collapse but, if he really cares so much about how beef is processed or what McDonald’s does to brains and bodies of children or labor conditions or food systems, maybe he could offer something beyond the view from St. Barts.
As it is, he’s put himself in the shoes he offered Waters—it’s easy to agree with everything he says, but that doesn’t make anyone like him very much.
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