Video Killed the Radio Star

Punk as Fuck

When I was a kid my dad told me a story about the kitchen in the Crease, a bar around the corner from his. We called the bar ‘the store’, everyone in the family did, because that’s where we spent time together as a family. The Crease’s building was originally owned by my father’s aunt, who first immigrated from Greece before her brother and set up shop. Apparently they had a falling out along the way and never spoke to each other for the remaining years of their lives. Is this part of the story? Is it not?

It was a busy Saturday night, the dishwasher asked the cook for a sandwich. The cook said no. The dishwasher asked a few more times and the cook ignored him. This made the dishwasher mad. So he stabbed the cook. That’s it, that’s the story. And I’ve never forgotten it. This was my father’s way of saying stay out of the business. 

Then about ten years ago I brought this story up to a guy who used to bartend at the Crease, Jamie. He told me he liked to duck out of work for a quick beer at Souris’, Busch on draft, and that my dad “always gave pretty girls free refills on popcorn,” an unforgettable phrase.

I asked Jamie about the stabbing in the kitchen, he became somber. He knew the cook, they were friends, he still lives with the consequences of the attack, in a wheelchair. See, when I told this story it was a reflection on me, my proximity to the real life of kitchens, my own real real authenticity. But that story is changed, I’ve been touched by its violence and it’s no longer cocktail fodder.

Last week it was announced that Momofuku Ko is closing. The original Ko opened in 2009, a 12 seat restaurant that was David Chang’s fuck you to fine dining. Its various obituaries can’t help but call it “punk rock.” Yawn. The food world loves the idea of punk rock, it so authentic, so real, so brave. The same way that they love the idea that being drawn to cooking makes a person a loner, a disruptor.

Me? I’ll never get over Chang’s temper and how it hasn’t seemed to harm any of his successes. In fact, it’s been openly referred to in interviews and articles, he’s written about it in his memoir. Before we learned the term “kitchen culture” and threw it around like confetti, there was a perverse pleasure in talking about Chang’s temper, the same kind of pleasure Anthony Bourdain basks in describing all the tawdry things that happen behind the scenes in “Kitchen Confidential.”

In her October 9 essay “On the Grandma Rule”, Alicia Kennedy published a talk she gave at the Terroir Symposium recently. The ‘Grandma Rule¹’ refers to the Bourdain edict people should eat anything offered to them by their host when they travel, out of respect and curiosity. Anything else is an atrocity, including, especially, being a vegetarian.

Kennedy, a vegetarian, refers to this talk as her “first foray into what I’m calling Critical Bourdain Studies, meaning an excavation and critique of what a certain moment in food culture has meant, its repercussions and its good impacts. Encompassed in Critical Bourdain Studies is the work, yes, of Anthony Bourdain, but also Lucky Peach and the notion of chefs as ‘rock stars’ or ‘gods of food.’ It’s a critique of a hyper-masculine approach to food that has rules and regulations about who’s in and who’s out; which ingredients are in and which are out.” 

These words connected the dots for me, as so often Kennedy’s writing does. My problem, well, one of them, is that I remember the world before Bourdain, and now live in the one after. These worlds are different places. The strength and certainty of Bourdain, his voice, his beliefs, and all the rules have become fact at this point. I was a full-formed human being before then, and I remember when we didn’t have such reverence for chefs. I reference Bourdain not because of anything he did, but because of what he wrote. Since May 2000, when his book came out, things have changed. Our regard and investment in chefs has changed radically. Reading that book gave people a weirdly intimate insight into professional kitchens, without having to work in one. And it didn’t change what was happening in kitchens, not for the better. It attracted a lot of bros I’ve always thought destined to Wall Street but chose this temple of toxic masculinity instead. The place he so deftly described was one where anything goes, where there are no ramifications to bad behavior as long as the plates hit the pass.

Isn’t it wild how the same language used by abusers, shit like “I wouldn’t hit you if I didn’t love you so much” is also used by rageful chefs who care so much about food they can’t help themselves? There’s a part of us that eats this shit up because if an artist yells or throws something or punches holes in the walls they are passionate, they really live life.

Why does food taste better when we know someone suffers for it? We love the tunnel vision, the obsessiveness of chefs, and we reward them. The thing that sucks about the dominance of the Momofuku places, especially in their first decade, is the lingering affect of Chang’s behaviors in the kitchen, his trickle-down temper is part of his legacy. Every professional kitchen has a personality that also teaches cooks, along with the education and experience they get. Those cooks move on to different kitchens, and some day they may run one. And for a lot of them, this behavior, these outbursts become acceptable, because, well, they were accepted. I worked with someone from Momofuku who told me to approach every day with the following notion: I was going to get punched in the face every day and couldn’t change that. But how would I react to being hit in the face? What was I going to do about it?

To be clear, what he, my boss, was trying to communicate to me how to do my job. What he wanted me to think about was a plan B for every situation that could go wrong, and possibly a plan C. It’s raining, it’s Friday, our deliveries are going to be late, somebody’s going to call out because it’s the first nice day of the year, it’s a holiday Monday so it’s just like Sunday…things like that. Really I just couldn’t get the thought of being punched in the face out of my head.

If you grew up around violence, it creates an invisible (if you’re lucky) imprint on your self, on your nervous system. And working with someone with an explosive temper can provoke it. This doesn’t just apply to physical attacks, verbal abuse is also damaging. Sometimes it’s worse, the impact lingers and you think you should be over it. And if the person throws things, even if it’s doesn’t hit you, it makes its mark. Being around a volatile person and trying to keep that person content is exhausting work.

Anyway, none of this is punk rock. Just stylish affectations to always posit oneself as being misunderstood yet authentic, always the underdog and from the heart, a beacon of raw expression to this bloated, uninspired world incapable of independent thought. 

And no, there will be no welcoming back in the public spotlight of Mario Batali, who used his restaurants to sexually assault his staff. 

I just don’t care about food that much for all these assholes we have to deal with. All the ego that goes along with creating dishes we’ve never seen before, this world of men, the power they seek, the self-importance they try to believe in, their goddamn fragilities, I’m tired of it. Screw the casual brutalities and aggressions forgiven because success and statues must be achieved at any cost. It’s fucking everywhere and I’m done with it. There are literally too many people actually tortured in this world for me to care about a tormented chef. If somebody is hellbent on a work environment where taking care of the staff is the first priority, now we’re talking. What if we consider work conditions as much as we do flavor and creativity? Show me someone obsessed with figuring out how to feed the growing number of people in need, well, then you can punch me in the face.

Don’t worry. I can take it. This time it’s worth it.

1. “You may not like Grandma’s Thanksgiving turkey. It maybe be overcooked and dry-and her stuffy salty and studded with rubbery pellets of giblets you find unpalatable in the extreme. You may not even like turkey at all. But it is ‘Grandma’s Turkey.’ And you are in Grandma’s house. So shut the eff up and eat it. And afterwards say, “Thank you Grandma, why yes, yes of course I’d love seconds.” (Bourdain, Medium Raw)