On the plane to Aspen, I read Anthony Bourdain’s The Nasty Bits, a blissfully haphazard collection of essays from his travels. Let’s just ignore how freaking cute the guy is for a second (mayjah crush): the man can write. His best stuff, somewhat surprisingly, doesn’t center around the oddities he discovers along the way (one notable example is tete de veau, or calf’s face “rolled up and tied with its toungue and thymus gland”); it’s the razor-sharp observations of the world through the eyes of a culinary wizard that are the true gem here. He’s unflinching in his willingness to abandon the conventions of his profession; while many chefs view Vegas as a No-Man’s-Land for serious restauranteurs, Bourdain holds up Bouchon Bistro and Osaka as paragons of opportunity, bringing adventurous eating to those who would ordinarily not have the chance to sample foie gras.
In “Are You A Crip or A Blood?” Bourdain divides chefs into two categories: those (“Bloods”) who believe that ingredients should be pulled from what’s available in a given region (like Alice Waters of Chez Panisse), and those (“Crips”) who gleefully combine cultures and tastes, believing that where an ingredient is from is far less important than whether it tastes good (like Nobu Matsuhisa). An excerpt:
“Not long ago, watching perhaps the greatest of the Blood chefs (a man with only the faintest and best-intentioned Crip tendencies), Thomas Keller, yanking fresh garlic and baby leeks out of the ground at a nearby farm in the Napa Valley, I felt a powerful, bittersweet frission, a yearning for how things might, in the best of all possible worlds, be. On the other hand, standing in Tokyo’s Tsukiji market, gaping at the daily spoils of Japan’s relentless rape of the world’s oceans, I thought: ‘Jesus! Look at all this incredible fish! Damn, that toro looks good! That monkfish is amazing! I want some.’ Fully conscious of the evil that men do in the name of food, I have a very hard time caring when confronted with an impeccably fresh piece of codfish.”
I myself am a die-hard Crip. It’s true, nothing compares to the taste of a tomato straight off a local farmer’s vine, and I love trolling the Union Square Farmers Market for the freshest cheeses and herbs…but I think the idea of confining yourself to regional ingredients is terribly restrictive. When it comes down to it, I don’t really care whether my food comes from down the block or across the ocean: if it tastes good, I want to eat it.
Which side are you on?
