Oh no he di'nt, the first "Bourdain Says"

I'm letting two posts stew until after I screen a few (probably bad) LAFF movies, but this one just couldn't wait.

Sometime last week Anthony Bourdain said this about Chez Panisse's Alice Waters:
"I'll tell you. Alice Waters annoys the living shit out of me. We're all in the middle of a recession, like we're all going to start buying expensive organic food and running to the green market. There's something very Khmer Rouge about Alice Waters that has become unrealistic. I mean I'm not crazy about our obsession with corn or ethanol and all that, but I'm a little uncomfortable with legislating good eating habits."

And then more recently on NPR:
"Thanks to Waters' influence, a generation of ambitious chefs now confuse process and result. Shout-outs to their sources fill their menus, and transparency has become synonymous with integrity and honesty... And more to the point: Shopping is not cooking."

I agree with parts of both, McDonalds should not be closed to save us from our bad eating habits, and Davis strawberry jam is still strawberry jam. But these statements are both so reductive that they miss the intention behind Waters' food philosophy. True, eating organic is not always an economically viable option, but for the most part eating locally should be. When you live in California, home to the garlic capital of the world, there is absolutely no reason to buy garlic shipped over from China. It's not just about supporting local farmers (that's a bonus), it's about reducing our carbon footprint. And listing where your ingredients came from makes it so that the conscious patron doesn't have to ask.

Good food is made with good ingredients and in that sense shopping IS cooking. The problem, therefore, is one of perspective. When you partition life, and see the kitchen as the only place where "cooking" happens, your food is similarly limited. It's important to recognize that on a chemical level, food eaten translates to energy and in that sense a cook's influence (and his responsibility) extends beyond the plate.

I respect Bourdain because he knows a ton about food but he's a bully. At least on the West coast, Alice Waters' positive influence has been immense. She changed the way we approach food preparation and consumption. But hers is a holistic philosophy based around the idea of a more complete wellness, and maybe we shouldn't expect someone whose counter-philosophy is "shut up and eat" to really get that.