Bourdain is the BOH kitchen. The loud, hustling, steaming hot kitchen of clatttering pans and plates, of cooks screaming to each other over the music, other cooks, busboys and servers checking on the timing of orders, telling the dishwasher to bring more plates, their back-up mise en place, yada yada yada. Bourdain, as chef, as the maestro to this chaos, is the composer of the meals that the FOH consumes. His knowledge comes from the prepping and producing of the actual dishes.

What he has done in his writing is to open the door seperating FOH and BOH to show the realities of what goes into making your entrees and the goings-on of the restaurant business. He pulled back the curtain and demystified the magic of how your meals are made, and did it with a sense of humor, albeit dark and sardonic. Levy wants to enjoy the end result, willfully ignorant of Bourdain’s labors; Bourdain wants to joyfully tell you how messed up it was getting there, then have a cigarette.

Levy bemoans the vulgarity of too much testosterone. What else are you going to get in a hot, cramped kitchen filled with a group of guys using knives and talking trash, then write about your experiences in that milieu. I’m sure Levy and his male friends, when left to their own devices, degenerate into whatever level of boorishness is applicable.

So the choice is whether you prefer the FOH or BOH styles, if you can split the whole of culinary reportage into those two camps. I like the fact that there is as many styles of food writing as there are cuisines in the world.

French Laundry At Home, I already read your exploits but now I find you completely hysterically funny.

And now, for the rest of the story…

*snicker*

It’s all branding/marketing hype, by the way. Like just about everything in our consumer society. Usually informed by a kernal or two of truth (you get a clear sense of what Bourdain is like once the camera turns off,) but pumped up like a baloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade so the market “gets” it.

Ramsey’s (hot and cold) balls and a panty-less Britney have a lot in common. Sorry.

Can somebody please tell me how I can get paid to whine like an adolescent?

He’s really trying to be tough and shocking. Having said that, I think I would like having a beer with the guy when the cameras are off.

I could not agree more. Earlier this year I read an entertaining memoir called “Julie and Julia” in which the author challenged herself to make all 500+ recipes of Julia Child’s first volume of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” within a calendar year. She was encouraged by friends to blog about her experiences, her blog became popular, and the memoir is a collection and expansion on her blog entries. She got skewered on Amazon.com by many readers who were offended by the language she uses. Since we are talking about a female author here, I don’t know that her memoir could be classified as “machismo food writing” – but she wrote as she speaks and did not filter her words to become someone she is not. The readers who gave her a one- or two-star rating, just because they were offended by too many four-letter words, completely missed that her memoir was entertaining, clever, and funny, and are probably of the same ilk as Levy – just because they don’t choose to use such embellishments in their own vernacular doesn’t mean they have the right to accuse those who do of “bad writing”.

More and more people are starting to relate to that kind of gritty honesty and “no-holds-barred” style of food writing and it obviously just pisses Levy off that that’s just not in his character. But I’m sure there will always remain a market for the softer touch. He should just keep on being himself and not trying to put down those who are different from him.

One of the reasons food writing has become more read in latter days is because the prose is incorporating the vernacular, making it accessible instead of off-putting. No longer twee and precious, it can be enjoyed with the same gusto once only used by readers of the sports page.

Mr. Levy wants to write “assuming my readers are an educated audience who would get (and smile or learnedly chuckle at) allusions to the Bible, Shakespeare, Dickens, or Damon Runyon” which puts him squarely in the 1950s rather than even 20 years later. Modern prose doesn’t resemble that of Jane Austen for a reason – we don’t speak that way anymore. He calls it coarse, I call it true to life.

Not only that, but I think it’s glib to dismiss it as a masculine issue only. Prose has changed for both genders! I pepper my speech with the f-word and other assorted classics, and when I write, I tend to write that way (in my journal, at least).

Bourdain’s writing captivates me because he writes as he speaks – literally. There’s no pretense to it, and damned little filter, thankfully. We get his thoughts about something unpolished, perhaps, but that makes them more visceral and easier to experience. There’s an honesty in his work. Oh, and it makes for entertaining reading, as well.

Mr. Levy managed to bore me horribly with 2 short pages. So convoluted! So pedantic! Yes, he “unsplit(s) infinitives and unpick(s) clichés,” but he forgets to unlock the part of his brain that could relate to an actual human.

Ah, well. His is the kind of style I’m not sorry to see go. Where food is something only to be experienced by the cultured elite, and where the grubby masses should be on the outside of the restaurant window, forlornly observing something they’ll never be classy enough to enjoy themselves.

I may be a bit of a meathead but I find the intensity in his voice to be so refreshing. Levy sounds out of touch, old-fashioned, and–excuse the coarse and misogynistic term–a huge pussy. What he calls macho and profane, I call passionate and authentic.

And both the critics and public were obviously ready for more in-your-face writing about food. Look at the success of this writing style. Levy seems to think it’s taking over food writing but there are plenty of people who are just as good at writing and have found success without the “machismo.” Not trying to take away from Ruhlman’s masculinity (and who could when he’s responsible for “Charcuterie”?), but he’s a perfect example.

Don’t cry, get mad!

I don’t food writing NEEDS to be crude or overly “macho” – you, Michael, manage to do quiet well without indulging in that vein – but neitrher do I feel it is endemic to the whole field.

As for a Bourdain backlash – well, he’s always had his detractors and, without trying to be an apologist for Bourdain, I have to say that Levy hasn’t quite nailed Bourdain’s style on the head. It’s true there’s plenty of profanity and porn references and a definite machismo in his written and spoken work, but it’s equally true that the bulk of what he produces tends to be more explorative and ruminative. (OK, so there WAS the Las Vegas episode!)

For every Bourdain or Ramsay, there is still a Pepin or Ripert or Ruhlman – and plenty of women chefs and writers out there, too – for Levy to read. (On the other hand, in all fairness, I don’t ever think I’ve read or heard someone like, say, Andre Soltner or Alain Sailhac saying that a perfectly reduced jus or fabulous piece of lardo ever “gave them wood,” like it does Mario Batali.)

People’s loves are usually narrow, but their likes are broad.

Rather than poo-poo this new brand of food writing–just as, I’m sure, other writers poo-pooed the likes of Thompson and Bukowski–Levy should be welcoming it. It only helps the broader cause: to get people to pay more attention to what and how they eat and live.

It’s a personal point. But pussy as an insult ranks alongside gay as an insult. It just doesn’t work in adult conversation. It made me think you were a 13 year old biy.

It’s especially bizarre to hear people talking about the “masculinity” of a food writer based on what he has just written. One thing has got nothing to do with the other. And I guess that was my point.

Either he’s a good or a bad writer. Calling him a pussy makes me think you haven’t left high school yet. It tells the reader m,ore about you than it does him. And it’s got nothing to do with his writing.

Skawt. Thats kinda my point right there.

Most people don’t read Anthony Bourdain because they want to know about food. They read him because they want to be entertained.

And thats a damned dangerous thing for a writer.
I can think of stacks of better writers who got caught up in that trap and it stopped them from publishing a decent word thereafter. There were very few writers who could handle the whole gonzo/new journalism “I am the story gig” even for a short while. And none who could do it the whole time. It makes for bad writing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyyEc-GNDfQ

“Good grief is he being whinny!”

As I read on it dawned on me that Levy wasnt seeing the fine detail of his situation. What he speaks of writting, and has been writting for years, is closer to the, and Ill use the term lightly as I cant think of a better way to explain it, Happy Homemaker crowd.

People who want to know more about the food placed in front of them and the decor and feeling of a place then what goes on in the actual kitchen. Mr. Levy needs to realize that times, they are a changin’ (To qoute Mr. Bob Dillon). People are more interested as of late, thanks to the shared success of the storytelling by Bourdain, White, and yes even our own Mr. Ruhlman, in the nitty gritty ugly side of the kitchen.

Food in general bores people now. Why do you think Rachel Ray has 4 TV shows, a daytime talk show, as well as a magazine that now rivals Oprahs? because people care more about the face then the food. Its like our fascination as a nation with VH1’s Behind the Music, or MTV’s Real World, or even Hells Kitchen. We want DRAMA! and what better spot to get it then from rockstar-esq cooks who spend their days yelling and throwing people out of kitchens then anywhere else?

Mr. Levy should know how public interest changes.. he even hints to it in his own article. “But perhaps the women were right to protest: I was only one of the first fellows invading what had been their territory. Surveying the lay of the land now, the scenery has altered again.”

Mr. Levy, news flash, your the ladies now… celebrity chefs are the new you.

My suggestion, stick to what you do and dont complain about the world as it changes. Chances are it will come full circle again, you wouldnt want to be remembered as a whiner now would you?