Unabashed

Every time I post something about the show No Reservations I get a deluge of comments and emails from vegetarians or animal-rights activists lambasting the show–and me–for insensitivity towards animals. Evidently in one commercial for the show there was a cow bleating, and people didn’t like that. Well, I didn’t see that commercial and I don’t know what episode that might have been from. It might have been in Chile, where there was a beef festival, which was approached with grim determination by Bourdain, who clearly did not enjoy, nor revel in, his visit. So here’s my problem: you haven’t seen the show, and you’re evaluating a man’s nature based on a 30 second commercial that some producer put together in a studio closet, and you’re even going so far as to condemn me because I happen to like the show. So, in response, I’ll give my defense, and then I’m going to get a little nasty.

The Defense

Okay, so he’s not a vegetarian apologist. Neither am I. And I don’t condone animal torture, either. For the record, I’ve seen no evidence of animal torture on the show no matter what some people might have seen in some commercial. The few instances where an animal was harvested for food on the show was documented with a somber atmosphere and the host normally gives a discourse about his unsettled feelings, going on to explain that they are documenting natural behaviors of a people from a different culture.

As for Bourdain’s defense (not that he needs one), here is an excerpt from an interview with Dave Weich:

Dave: Okay, about the lurid material…I promised our staff that I’d show you an email we received on Monday.

Bourdain: [He begins to read the printed copy] Mmmm… I read the review of his book, A Cook’s Tour, and was sickened and disgusted…vile…distasteful…most of all inhumane…Just reading the review made me sick….This is extreme animal cruelty…sadistic, inhumane…take care to keep a close eye on your beloved cat…

Oh, the poor ducks!

Dave: Do you get a lot of that?

Bourdain: A fair amount. Depending on what time of day you confront me with this question, I’m either accepting of it or not.

I’m not Ted Nugent. My house is run, essentially, by an adopted, fully clawed cat with a mean nature. I would never hunt. I would never wear fur. I would never go to a bullfight. I’m not really a meat and potatoes guy. But the world is a big place, and this sort of nonsense smacks of elitism, contempt, and fear and those are all things I struggle against.

To travel the world sneering at other cultures for whom a chicken is the difference between life and death…or for instance the pig slaughter in Portugal: however horrifying it was to me and it was horrifying this is a center of social and cultural life for a community dating back six hundred years. If some Birkenstock-wearing knucklehead driving around in a SUV and wearing sneakers someone was sold into slavery to make is sniffling about the poor animals, that person is clearly never going to experience the world. They can live in their plastic bubble and reinforce their deeply held, and I’m sure earnest beliefs, but they’re missing the full length and breadth of the human condition.

I don’t like to see animals in pain. That was very uncomfortable to me. I don’t like factory farming. I’m not an advocate for the meat industry. But having traveled all over the world, the most heartbreaking moments for me were in poor cultures where people had nothing. To kill a chicken or a turkey and spend nine hours cooking, working so hard to be good hosts and show me a slice of their culture…I like them a hell of a lot more than this person.

Dave: The pig slaughter, I thought, was one of the best-written passages in the book. It completely transcends food writing; it’s literature about a culture. You describe your horror while the Portuguese women and children stand watching as if what’s going on were the most normal thing in the world. Which to some extent, in their lives, it is.

Bourdain: Listen, I deserved to be horrified. I was culpable in that animal’s death; it was fattened for me. But I am culpable in an animal’s death every time I pick up the phone. For twenty-eight years I’ve been picking up the phone and ordering meat, and like most of us I had absolutely no connection to where food comes from. In the last year, I’ve seen where food comes from, and it is not always pretty.

Understand, when you eat meat, that something did die. You have an obligation to value it not just the sirloin but also all those wonderful tough little bits.

The Nasty Bit

If you don’t want to watch the show, fine; I personally have no illusions about where my veal cutlet comes from, or how my steak was harvested, and I’m not going to apologize for being a carnivorous animal myself. Based on the responses I’ve seen to my posts about the show, I’m leaning toward agreeing with Bourdain’s assessment of vegan culture based on this quote from his book, Kitchen Confidential:

Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It’s healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I’ve worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold. Oh, I’ll accommodate them, I’ll rummage around for something to feed them, for a “vegetarian plate”, if called on to do so. Fourteen dollars for a few slices of grilled eggplant and zucchini suits my food cost fine.

The simple fact is that yes, there have been times on the show where an animal was harvested. Yes, they killed the animal, and then they ate it. They did not torture it. The business was grim and then it was done and what it meant was a family got to eat for a week. They got to survive. For you who sit in your air conditioned pimp pad and order Meat Lovers from Pizza Hut and scour the internet for a cause, for something to add spice to your dull, boring life, you would do well to remember that there are still people in the world who have to labor to live, who don’t have it so easy, who raise their food with care and patience because they’ll starve to death if they don’t.

So, if you don’t like the show, fine. I can live with that. But I’m through approving comments from people who live in this delusional little princess-strewn world and think that the indiginous people who still live in it should buy their meat pre-processed from the super Wal-Mart. In the world of blog commenting, consider my disapproval of your comment a formal slap to the jaws.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Anthony, Bourdain, carnivore, carnivorous, meat, no reservations, vegan, vegetarian

Disclaimer, added 1-28-08: If you saw a commercial that led you to believe this show is about “animal torture” and are resolutely refusing to watch it based on that single commercial, please note: You are wrong, quite possibly delusional, and missing out on a good show. Thanx. :-)

I admit it: I like to watch No Reservations, the Travel Channel show hosted by bejeweled Anthony Bourdain. It’s one of the few shows on television that I can sit through nowadays. I’m no chef, but I do like to eat, and I like to visit exotic locations vicariously through another, and Tony hits a lot of the spots I’d like to visit myself, along with drinking massive amounts of alcohol in virtually every variety. The show is edgy, and it’s not entirely uncommon to see dinner before it’s dead, and sometimes even while it’s being killed (no, I don’t get any kind of thrill at seeing animals killed, but I’m a realist, and I know that steak I ate last night had to come from somewhere, and there’s a very decent possibility that the methods used to kill animals in this show are equally if not more humane than those used to kill the cow who begat my steak). His commentary is entertaining, usually laced with funny witticisms, and the locations are always exotic and culturally significant. I’m fairly impressed by the website they’ve put together for him, along with a wiki, which I haven’t delved into very much but seems a near stroke of genius.

Little did I know when I started watching this show that Bourdain writes fiction; in the show’s intro he says he’s a writer, but since he’s a chef I assumed he was a cookbook writer. Of course he is a cookbook writer, but come to find out he also writes crime novels and murder-mysteries. I haven’t read any yet, but I will…

Best moments of the show:

• Bacon Doughnut (!) at Voodoo Doughnut in Portland, Oregon. Can I haz one, pleaze? And a tee shirt, too? Thanx.
• Shrimp-n-grits in Charleston, South Carolina. I’ve never had it, but I will.
• The palpitating cobra heart in Saigon. Yes: he ate the still-beating heart of a king cobra.
• The beach cookouts in Key West and Australia.
• The sensational private sushi sitting in Osaka, which according to interview transcripts, cost about $200.
• The ostrich egg in Africa. Some Bushmen cooked up the egg in dirt. Bourdain noted that it was “gritty.”
• The pig anus, also in Africa, noted by Bourdain as being his all-time low. (This from a man who said he would not eat monkey brains or rat.)
• South America, when he dosed himself with ayahuasca.
• And, of course, when he tried riding a 4-wheeler up a sand dune in Australia and it rolled on him.

From the transcript of an online interview (2006):

Washington, D.C.: I still get nightmares from that beating cobra heart that you swallowed in Saigon. Do you throw it up in this Sunday’s outtakes show?

Anthony Bourdain: No. Actually eating the cobra heart was a lot like eating a very small, very angry and rather athletic oyster. The fermented shark in Iceland was much, much more difficult.

And, finally, one last quote:

Anthony Bourdain: I would rather have sex with a crackhead clown an ebola-infected spider monkey than eat Spam on a regular basis. Does Spam qualify as food or bulding material?

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Anthony, bacon doughnut, Bourdain, cobra heart, doughnut, no reservations, voodoo