The Eat Generation
A Night at the Food Fight
comments (3) May 16th, 2009 in Blogs
Katharina Riehle, member
28 users recommend
From the left: Anthony Bourdain, Alice Waters, Duff Goldman
I have a confession: I love Anthony Bourdain. His dry wit, insightful observations, and expletive-interspersed stories keep me hooked on the Travel Channel. So I jumped at the opportunity to see the culinary bad boy live at a local food discussion in Hartford, CT. Bourdain was joined by Chez Panisse founder Alice Waters and Ace of Cakes star Duff Goldman. They each answered a series of questions—with candor and often a good amount of panache—from both a moderator and the audience. Some of my favorites:
What did you have for dinner last night?
Goldman: A hot dog on the Amtrak Train
Bourdain: Delivery pizza
Waters: A mozzarella cheese and turnip sandwich
If you could choose your last meal, what would it be?
Goldman: A falafel from a street vendor
Bourdain: Roasted bone marrow from St. John Restaurant in London, accompanied by grilled French bread topped with crushed sea salt
Waters: Shark fin soup
Whole Foods: Good or Evil?
Waters: Tentatively said good, a step in the right direction
Bourdain: Immediately answered evil and called it the “Starbucks of the organic food movement;” trendy, corporate, and unnecessarily expensive.
What would you absolutely never eat?
Goldman: (shouted) cupcakes
Bourdain: Chicken Nuggets
How would you improve airplane food?
Sadly, all three culinary masterminds combined couldn’t come up with a solution for this one, although Waters did propose passing out apples grown by local farmers instead of stale peanuts.
What’s your guilty pleasure?
Waters confessed her love for caramel corn, and shared the story of one Christmas morning, when she found herself rummaging through the garbage can for the last bits of it, desperately craving the gooey, sticky, definitely non-organic treat.
What’s your opinion on the celebrity chef phenomenon?
Goldman: thinks people relate to celebrity chefs because everyone eats; everyone handles, prepares and needs food, making chefs more relatable and approachable than other famous personalities.
Waters: says she “never watch(es) TV”, but in her mind the perfect cooking show would be something along the lines of Mr. Rogers with food.
Bourdain: (who previously declared his “naked contempt” for celebrity chefs) conceded: "Yeah, Irony Sucks."
The hot topic of the night:
Where do you stand on the organic food movement?
Waters: Shared her vision to provide a free organic breakfast, lunch, and snack to every child in school.
Bourdain: Disagrees with Waters, not over the benefits of organic, local foods (he revealed feeding his 2-year-old daughter only organic milk), but with the high costs of healthy eating, especially in tough economic times.
The two-hour conversation came and went in a flash. It was like sitting around the dinner table with your (immensely famous) chef friends, bouncing ideas, inspiration, culinary theories, and fruit off each other. Yes, you read that right: fruit. Picture Goldman picking at the fruit basket stage-prop while bombarding Bourdain with grapes, who naturally responds by dropping a bushel of celery and a couple f-bombs. Meanwhile Waters rummages through the props, in preparation for the imminent food fight, pulling out a bunch of asparagus, when Goldman chimes in: “Man, those are great cooked up with some garlic and butter!”
posted in: Blogs, interview, Anthony Bourdain, Alice Waters, Duff Goldman, celebrity, chefs, organic food
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About the Eat Generation
Follow the foodie adventures of former Fine Cooking recipe tester Dabney Gough as she takes a bite out of life in San Francisco. By day she's the marketing director for a specialty grocery store. By night, she's usually out exploring the city's amazing cocktail scene.
Comments (3)
a guy like Tony, then get faced in a good dive bar until closing time and hit Chinatown for Dim Sum and what ever the chef really like to cook, but never does. Then emerge onto Mott St as the sun is rising over the Manhattan bridge. A night well spent Posted: 4:49 pm on May 20th
Posted: 3:11 pm on May 20th
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