The Politics of Food

Remembering Anthony Bourdain

A recent news story described how a liberal journalist found himself outdoors near a large group of people standing in the line in the winter cold, waiting to get into a Trump rally. Liberals and Conservatives have been so alienated from each other recently that we do not talk to each other, much less interact. I know Democrat voters who would never read an article in Conservative Treehouse or Breitbart. I know Republicans who refuse to discuss politics with their woke relatives. And we all know that the mainstream media (MSM) pundits rarely go outside the East Coast or West Coast bubbles. But one bitter-cold winter day, an intrepid MSM reporter went to talk to the frozen folks waiting to get into the Trump rally.

What he found perplexed and delighted him, although it seems ordinary enough to me. He found out that these people were friendly, sensible, and quite willing to talk to him. They were kind and polite to him. They talked not about hating this or that person, but about specific issues that affected them: the open border, rising crime, rampant inflation, the seemingly endless billions of dollars dumped into Ukraine. Nobody insulted the reporter or screamed at him. Nobody screamed racist diatribes, nobody demanded that anyone be lynched. In fact, some of the people in the crowd were Black. It was just conversation. and pleasant conversation at that.

The reporter was so stunned he wrote about this like he had just found the lost Ark of the Covenant. He had believed that MAGA people were vicious racists spewing lies and trying to harm people. He was told we played with guns and hit people over the head with Bibles. Instead, he found patient, well-informed people with real concerns.

All of this reminded me of Anthony Bourdain, the man whose biography listed his job as a “travel documentarian.” Bourdain died in June 2018, and he is one of the few liberals I miss. Not that Bourdain wanted to be known as political—in fact, he once said that celebrities should keep their political ideas to themselves. Like most imperfect people, he did not always take his own advice. My read is that Bourdain was likely libertarian and he was clearly no fan of Trump. But what Bourdain did was the same thing that reporter did at the Trump rally, except Bourdain did it on an international scale.

Bourdain talked to people who came from a different place and may have had different ideas than he did. And Bourdain did this by breaking bread.

Born in Manhattan and raised in a commuter town in New Jersey, Bourdain, as a kid, wanted to be a writer. Some people have said he was a sort of gonzo writer in the style of Hunter S. Thompson, but I think he was closer to Mark Twain, if Mark Twain had been a chef. Bourdain dropped out of college (Vassar, strangely enough) to go and work in a restaurant. He claimed his love affair with food began with a raw oyster he enjoyed once on a family vacation in France, but whatever it was, Bourdain saw something in food most of us miss. He saw it as the glue that holds cultures together. It was a universal language with a billion dialects. It was a way two distant people could connect.

Bourdain started jobbing around kitchens and as a young man graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, which is the Harvard of chef schools. He sometimes worked under the exalted title of executive chef, but kitchen work is remarkably egalitarian. He would write about his days in the New York restaurant scene with almost spiritual reverence, describing the frenetic pace of kitchen work, the crazy creativity, and the mountains of food. He told about kitchen help, who ranged from classically trained chefs like himself to undocumented poor guys who didn’t speak English and were trying to scrape out a living by preparing $100 appetizers for the richest folks in Manhattan. During these years—which Bourdain loved with a sentimental passion—he reported how sometimes the busboys were sent out to the streets to score pot or cocaine or other substances to help the kitchen crew manage the crush of work. Restaurant work is like a series of avalanches; either the kitchen was buried under endless demands for complicated dishes that had to be prepared fast, but then it was dead quiet until the next avalanche. There are photos of Bourdain and his crew sitting on the floor, collapsed in exhaustion, grabbing some food and shut eye and getting off their feet for whatever time the restaurant pace allowed.

It was in these years that Bourdain got addicted to heroin, an addiction he got over; he also became a prodigious smoker, an addiction he could never entirely shake. In this jumbled atmosphere of the privileged and the hoi-polloi, gastronomy and poverty, he came to see food as the a sort of unifying language.

And it is.

Bourdain started to write, but not books about cooking or recipes, but rather books about food which turned into books about culture which morphed again into stories about people. Once on TV, Bourdain became famous for eating the weird as well as the wonderful. He sometimes ate gross things, because in some parts of the world, they eat things we would not eat here. He ate sheep testicles, the eyeball of a seal, and the beating heart of a live cobra. He even ventured into American fast food joints, where he was repulsed by chicken nuggets.

But don’t think of Bourdain as a food snob. He liked Popeye’s chicken. In his travels, he frequently ate cheap street food and ventured into the rough neighborhoods. He dined at luxurious restaurants and in dives and sometimes ate with ordinary people in their humble homes.

Bourdain understood food culture like few other people. He knew that there was a mainstream food culture, which is what we think people eat, and then there are all the wonderful repositories of different foods. It’s like politics: we think all Democrats are the same, but they’re not. He once came to Houston to write about Houston foods, but he eschewed upscale name restaurants like Café Annie’s and Brennan’s and took a pass on the barbecue joints; instead he went to a quinceañera (did you know there is quinceañera food?), an Indian restaurant, and a Vietnamese seafood market. Houston is a gloriously eclectic city with pockets of immigrants from all over the world, and Bourdain went to them. Because the heart and soul of nouveau Houston is not cowboy culture, is diversity. Bourdain saw that and he saw it in the food.

Food is an interesting metaphor for the human condition. First, when it comes to food, every culture has to work with what they have. Eskimo food is not going to be similar to Polynesian cuisine because of the raw materials available. Then, you have to factor in availability, seasonality, and the global problem of poverty. People eat not just what they like, but what they can afford. And then they try to make it as tasty as they can, whether they use chili peppers or spices or fermented fish sauce. Dishes taht require elaborate preparation require that the family have people who can devote hours a day to cooking. (This is why America’s hyper-busy culture demands fast food and microwaves.) Food is the centerpiece of so many human activities: holidays, family gatherings, funerals, even affairs of state are sometimes conducted at or after elaborate state dinners.

It is all but impossible to eat with a person and not talk to that person. It is hard to break bread with a person with reasonable manners and not come away liking that person, or at least liking them better than before. Food knits hearts together. Bourdain’s many books and TV shows were about food in context and that context was other cultures, other viewpoints, other people. In some cultures, the men and women eat separately. In some cultures, people eat with their hands. In some cultures, the guest is given the largest portions of the best food. These all reflect parts of the human experience.

It is hard not to like the people that Bourdain dined with. He chowed down on street food in some cities, shared family meals seated on the floor in other places, and he sometimes went to fancy dinners with fancy people. Watching Bourdain on TV, I had the interaction by proxy, but I came away liking the other people and knowing them a little better.

For all of this good food and exotic travel, Anthony Bourdain was not always a pleasant man. He frequently put down celebrity chefs, although he credited Julia Child as one of his patron saints. And he had his own opinions. He thought being vegetarian or vegan was ridiculous and dismissed it as “a First World luxury.” He saw what so many liberals in our world do not see, namely that animal products are necessary for survival in some impoverished parts of the world.  In terms of music, he liked the Ramones and, when he was executive chef, said he would fire anyone who played Billy Joel music in his kitchen. And while Billy Joel was a big fan of Bourdain’s cooking, Bourdain never reciprocated as a fan of Joel’s music.

In the rich first world, we have access to all kinds of food. We grow our own food but we import even ordinary ingredients as well, giving us an abundance of fruits and vegetables. Our stores stock exotic ingredients and spices from all over the world. Even a normal grocery store will offer jicama, rice paper, Australian wines, and Hoisin paste. We have everything, even in our neighborhood supermarkets.

And we eat fast food. What is wrong with us?

Bourdain worked with a foot in both worlds. He could be extraordinarily critical of painstakingly nuanced sophisticated dishes, yet he appeared in a Simpsons episode called “The Food Wife” that gently mocked him. While trying not to wear his politics on his sleeve, he once said that the “smug, self-congratulatory left” led to the election of Donald Trump. He talked about how the privileged elitists of the East Coast (the ones he used to cook for in Manhattan) held the red states in such contempt, it enraged working people. Bourdain said he spent a lot of time in “red states” where he observed that people there are doing what everyone does: the best they can to get by and care for themselves and those they love. Bourdain said that mocking working people helps no one and makes the world an angrier, more hateful place.

In other words, the same Bourdain who would go into the jungles of Ecuador or remote parts of Japan to dine, was brave enough to go to a rib joint in Ohio or a diner in North Jersey or a bakery in Oklahoma and share food. And what he found was the same everywhere he went: people eat food and when you eat food with those people, you come to understand them better.

And that’s the unifying language of food. It may be the reason that in the Biblical book of Acts, it is recorded that one of the first ministries of the church was the kitchen crew. The earliest Christians ate together regularly and they did it for unity. It brought them together.

Bourdain despised smug people who thrived on put-downs, even if they voted in a similar way. He once castigated Bill Maher, a liberal comedian and icon who is remarkably oblivious to actual political reality. “He’s insufferably smug,” Bourdain said after appearing on his show. It is rare that I agree with liberals, but I could not agree with Bourdain’s insights more.

I’m not sure if Bourdain ate with Maher or not, but that may be an example where food is insufficient to bridge the gap. When one person feels inexhaustibly superior to another, then communion breaks down. It’s hard to talk to a person who thinks you’re main role in life is to shine their shoes.

In terms of faith, Bourdain once said, “I’m not exactly a good Catholic, but I do have the paperwork to suggest I might be.” He said he respected people of faith, but he had “tried religion” and chose to abandon it. He was for all intents and purposes, a practical atheist. This is unfortunate.

Bourdain was married, had a daughter, and divorced in that order, although his first wife remained a lifelong friend and confidante. His arduous travel schedule made it difficult to have any sort of real homelife.

In the last couple of years of his life, Bourdain had a torrid romance with Asia Argento, an Italian actress who accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. Asia was one of the leading voices of the #metoo movement. Their romance was far from conventional and Bourdain was plagued by bouts of jealousy when the couple was apart—which their work often required.

Bourdain died in June 2018 and his texts from that time period indicate he was depressed and disappointed with this career. His last texts were with Asia Argento and they appeared to be having a mild argument. Bourdain died in a picturesque old hotel in France.

He had more or less broken up with Argento, or at least he had reason to believe that. He was seeking romantic advice from his first wife, and he had been drinking. He was found the next day hanged, and his death was ruled a suicide.

The suicide seems hard to reconcile with the life he led. It is hard to imagine that a man with such wit and such talent—at writing, cooking, and seeing the truth in travel—would want to give up what looked like the greatest job in the world. People paid him to travel around the world and sample the food and all he had to do was offer some opinions and insights. Plus Bourdain was naturally outspoken and opinionated. But in his final texts, he commented that he hated his life and he hated his job.

Bourdain was back in the news recently when Henry Kissinger died at the age of 100, because Bourdain was a harsh critic of Henry Kissinger.

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia—the fruits of his genius for statesmanship—and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milosevic.” He said that in 2001 and in 2018 admitted that there were many things he said in his life that he came to regret.

“This,” he commented, “was not one of those times.”

As far as I can tell, Bourdain never supped with Kissinger. But he did eat many times with people whose lives were decimated by Kissinger’s political actions. He ate with people of Cambodia who lost family members due to these policies. And he saw a different side of America than those who plunge us into one neocon war after another. He saw that the Cambodians had lives every bit as important—perhaps more important—than the life of one Washington insider who viewed the world as his plaything. I don’t often agree with liberals, but I agree again with Bourdain. The world is not ours to destroy so we can rule over the ashes.

This demonstrates the value of food as cultural glue. Food is what makes us human. Food involves work and money and love and pleasure. Preparing food can be an exercise in creativity and an expression of love or it can be something done carelessly or something done to package cheap poisonous ingredients to make money. Eating can be a chore or a matter of survival or a delight. Taking a meal can be a respite and time of refreshing or it can be a rushed necessity. Bourdain went where food took him. Sometimes it took him to palaces and sometimes it took him to a makeshift kitchen behind somebody’s house in a slum. He supped with the poor and the noble. While he had great respect for the impoverished, he did not romanticize them, either. He did not talk down to the elites until the elites got up his nose with their elitist ways. He hated elitism.

Can great food bring world peace? Can differences be overcome by sharing meals? I think Bourdain might have been onto something, but it requires an honest heart and a willingness to speak with a combination of respect and frankness. Bourdain had that, but he was just one man and he burned out.

Which makes me wonder if flyover food might not be a good answer to our current political hostilities. Perhaps the snooty East Coasters could benefit from red state cuisine? Perhaps the glitterati of Los Angeles might benefit from simple foods, like at a soul food restaurant in Chicago or Cajun gator balls in the bayou. And I’m not talking Door Dash, I’m talking about people moving out of their comfort zone and joining others. Eating, talking.

And maybe some people from the flyover states need to eat a fancy meal with properly paired wines. I’m wondering if there might ever be such a thing as “food politics,” where we mix and mingle and get to know each other, whether we’re eating hot dogs or foie gras. It is very difficult to enjoy good food with people without tearing down some walls of hatred.

I miss Anthony Bourdain. You can still find a lot of his shows on streaming services and online.