Sometimes, a Steak is Just a Steak

Doctor Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, is said to have remarked, in response to the craze for symbolic examination he’d unleashed, “Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.”

Just as those living in the Post-Freudian Age strove to find meaning in the most mundane symbols, so too do food television presenters in the Post-Bourdainian age strive to decipher cultural meaning in a hamburger. And it’s really getting out of hand.

Dead for not even two years now, Anthony Bourdain changed the nature of food television, writing, and criticism. It’s easy to forget how, before he came along, food television was all about cooking. Here’s the food, here’s how you make it, and oh, isn’t it yummy. By the way, here’s where it comes from, cue some nice scenery and music.

But Julia Child and Emeril Lagasse were never really interested in deconstructing the taco as a symbol of social struggle. Bobby Flay did not worry if his flambe was sexist. Gordon Ramsay’s main cultural touchstone was his entertaining and variegated profanity.

But Bourdain had a lot of opinions, and his show was always at least as much about where and who the food came from than the food itself. At the time, it was a refreshing change. We watched his show, and learned that good cooks, and good recipes, often come from a background of want and oppression. That’s a worthwhile lesson. Lazy rich people with their prime cuts learned that poor people, forced to be inventive with lesser materials, were actually eating better than they were. Tripe and trash fish made a comeback.

These are healthy things, don’t get me wrong. The cultural history of food, and the personal histories of the people who make that food can be very enlightening. Certainly, encouraging people to eat more than just prime cuts, which has probably resulted in a slight decline in food waste, is good for the planet. Teaching people they can eat well with no animal protein at all, which Tony did, regardless of his exaggerated disdain for vegetarians, is good for us.

Bourdain, and the people who’d worked with him, spawned many offshoots of his work. Remarkable shows like Chef’s Table, The Mind of a Chef, and Ugly Delicious spring to mind.

But, permit me to suggest: It’s all getting a bit loco.

Bourdain, towards the end of his life, more or less threw down the gauntlet himself, lampooning Chef’s Table in an epic sequence from Parts Unknown. Drunkenly gorging himself with chef Sean Brock at a South Carolina Waffle House to Vivaldi, he suggested that perhaps things were getting a bit overblown.

It’s fucking food, people. You put it in your mouth, and you chew it. Or, as his friend Fred Morin said, “Food is feces in waiting.”

Thank God, he said it. I won’t have to be the first. This deep and meaningful “food is culture” shit is overblown. One need look no further than Chef’s Table itself.

The show is luscious and the music incredible. The personal stories of the chefs are compelling and dramatic. But the food itself? The whole point, one might argue, of cooking? Over five seasons of the show, I could come up with only three chefs whose food I’d reach deep into my wallet for: Francis Mallmann’s, Nancy Silverton’s, and Ivan Orkin’s. The rest? Lush and beautiful, to be sure, but would I really pay 500 bucks to eat a balloon made of sugar? Would you? And if you did, wouldn’t you want a fucking cheeseburger after? Would I pay to indulge the aspirations of Virgilio Martinez, the Peruvian chef who states he doesn’t give a damn if it’s good or not, because he’s telling a story?

Tell your story somewhere other than my digestive tract, Senor Martinez. The reason I’d eat Mallmann, Silverton, and Orkin’s food is because it’s simple, and looks like it tastes fucking awesome. Plus, there’s lots of it, so I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be hungry after.

Towards the end of his life, Bourdain seemed to drift back to this point of view. He spent less time waxing rhapsodic over Ferran Adria’s latest foam and squeeze-bottle sensation, and more time eating noodles on patio furniture. This is, after all, what makes even 500 buck-a-plate chefs happy.

Perhaps if he could come back for a bit, he could show his pal David Chang back to the light.

I like David Chang. He’s mouthy, funny, and his food seems like it would taste awesome. When he was first featured on Mind of a Chef, he hit the right notes. But, in the Post-Bourdainian era, with his own show, Ugly Delicious, he seems to have gotten lost.

I was enjoying Ugly Delicious just fine until an episode on fried chicken. Suddenly, the variety, roots, and deliciousness of fried chicken were superseded by an agonizing over how cooking and enjoying fried chicken, which is in the US, rooted in African-American culture, might be (gasp) CULTURAL APPROPRIATION.

Drop the drumstick, Cletus. We’re on to you.

Let’s be clear on this: In my humble opinion, “cultural appropriation” is one of the biggest bullshit sandwiches available in the progressive menu. People enjoying other people’s food is the thing you get mad about when you’ve run out of other things to get mad about. As Bourdain once said about chicken, “It’s what’s for dinner, when you don’t know what you want for dinner.”

Chang didn’t just mention this and move on. No, he obsessed about it. To the point where the show was not fun anymore. And food TV should be fun, not an Auschwitz documentary. My opinion, again.

So, I switched off. But I like David Chang. But I came back about a year later. It was all going well, until the subject of curry came up. A panel of Indian women bemoaned the fact that Indian food was being subsumed under an English neologism. They couldn’t decide, however, whether they ought to be mad about nobody paying attention to Indian food, or people paying too much attention to the bastardized western version.

This all smacks of the tiresome “Authentic Mexican” debate that never seems to end. Yes, I understand that nachos are not “real” Mexican. But they are tasty, if done right. As is “real” Mexican. Don’t have a stroke.

Okay, one misstep. I kept watching. But then we came to steak. And this was where things really went off the rails. Unless you’re Morrissey, Pamela Anderson, or a cardiologist, there is precious little about steak to make one angry.

But angry, they are. Women, apparently. Because, as some uni-type professional feminists the producers found pointed out, steak is sexist.

Oh, man, why? The episode had started out with such great promise. Danny McBride recommending a blue-collar joint in Sydney. Dave and his foul-mouthed pals actually enjoying Outback Steakhouse, sans irony. Dave disguising himself as some kind of perverted Mario Brother to infiltrate a bath/steakhouse featuring naked dudes and big hunks of meat (it’s not what you think).

But then, time for the lecture. Can’t anyone let me enjoy my fucking food anymore without trying to make me feel bad about it? I mean, join the lineup, lady. PETA, Sting, Greta Thunberg, and my doctor are already way ahead of you. I don’t need anyone else ruining the pleasure of a nice, medium-rare sirloin for me.

Dave, take a cue from your fellow food rebel Roy Choi, and his celebrity apprentice, Jon Favreau. Their show, The Chef Show, is essentially just yummy food being made and consumed, by friends busting each other’s balls/ovaries. That’s it. It’s fun to watch, and never tries to make me feel bad about liking food.

Why you trying to make me feel bad about liking food, Chef? You want me to agonize over my choices? I already do that, every time I look in the mirror. That’s enough.

By all means, tell me about the culture my food came from. Then let me eat it. If your culture is yummy, I’ll eat it too. I may even try to make it at home. No, I probably won’t do it “properly.” Who gives a shit? Your people made something I liked, and I cared enough to try and make it for my family. Isn’t that, as Martha would say, a good thing?

But I do agree with you on one thing. People who order steak well-done are one step above Amoeba on the evolutionary chain. That’s fact. Not opinion.