Anthony Bourdain and the Cultural Valorization of Chefs and Cooks A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO ...

241 Pages·2016·1.04 MB·English

Hungry for More:
Anthony Bourdain and the Cultural Valorization of Chefs and Cooks

A Dissertation
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
BY

Justin Lars Bergh

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Dr. Catherine R. Squires

August 2016
© Justin Lars Bergh 2016
Acknowledgements
Many people have assisted and encouraged me in the long journey that resulted in the
completion of this dissertation. First, I want to thank the individuals I refer to in the text
as Jim, Taylor, Violet, Steven, Sal, Jonathan, and Noah for welcoming me into your
space and sharing your stories with me. I am honored to have worked alongside all of
you. Each of you taught me lessons, related both to life and working in the kitchen, that
have shaped this text in various ways. It is my sincere hope that this dissertation reflects
the time and space we shared together and in some way contributes to a greater
understanding of the ways in which your lives are affected by the valorization of chefs
and cooks in contemporary media. If the chef underground provides evidence of a once
promising utopian subcultural space whose traces continue to haunt the present and offer
a path forward into a new and better temporality, I hope you all locate it.
The completion of a project this daunting is not the product of an individual labor,
but instead the result of a collective intellectual endeavor. The shared knowledge,
questioning, criticism, encouragement, and debate I received from countless individuals
throughout the many stages of the dissertation process made its completion possible.
Catherine Squires, thank you for enthusiastically taking me on as your advisee. Without
your constant encouragement and unique ability to make sense of⎯and reign in⎯my
often unwieldy research and ideas, this dissertation would be a very different text. Mark
Pedelty, your constant belief in my ability has served as constant source of support
throughout this project and my four years at the University of Minnesota. Any aptitude I
have as an ethnographer is due to your passionate instruction, feedback, and unequivocal
confidence in the value of my field research. Jeffrey Pilcher, thank you for answering my
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unsolicited email and taking me on as your mentee. Your vast knowledge of food studies
is an invaluable resource and I will be forever grateful for your constant guidance,
critique, and foresight. Mary Vavrus, thank you for always offering a source of kindness
and support throughout my time at the University of Minnesota. I will forever cherish our
conversations and your sage advice. Thank you also to Laurie Ouellette, Lisa Sun-Hee
Park, and Roderick Ferguson for your various contributions to this work.
To my peers, thank you all for your diverse knowledge, ideas, and debate during
our thoughtful graduate seminars. I learned a great deal from all of you. In particular, I
want to thank Jay Frank. Your willingness to read drafts of this project and offer
insightful, sincere, and frank (pun intended) feedback strengthened my work. Moreover,
beyond our shared intellectual pursuits, I will cherish the friendship we developed.
Although we are now separated geographically, I still look forward to our hours-long
theoretical discussions and debates. I still want to finish a research project together.
Stephen Bennett, thank you for being you. Your calm and cool approach to academia
made my time more enjoyable. Jules Wight, your intelligence, perseverance, and
friendship inspired me more than you know.
I also want to thank the brilliant Stephanie Schulte. Thank you believing in my
ability as a naïve first-year graduate student and expertly guiding me on a path of success.
Your continued support means the world to me. Likewise, Gerry Schlenker, thank you for
pushing me as an undergraduate and believing in my potential. I hope to repay your
generosity and encouragement by approaching my role as an educator with the passion
and dedication you have for your students as my guide.
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Thank you to the many friends and colleagues I encountered throughout my adult
life that believed in me and encouraged me to pursue a career in academia. Thank you
Shaun Powers, Brett Smith, Pierre Poquette, and Jordan Erickson. Jason Probus, your
support throughout our master’s program and beyond is greatly appreciated. You are my
brother. Thank you for reading and editing my work for many years now. More
importantly, thank you for always being there when I need you and your unwavering
confidence in my ability. I look forward to our families growing old together.
Finally, thank you to my family. Without you this dissertation or any of my
success would not have been possible. Mom, you are a constant inspiration and source of
encouragement. You are my rock! Thank you for being the best possible mother, mentor,
editor, and friend I could have ever wished for. Tom, the way you approach life and your
family has made me the man I am today. I cannot thank you enough for your generous
fatherly advice and support. I hope I made you both proud.
Miranda, where do I even begin? You are my best friend, partner, and better half.
Without your tireless strength throughout my many years of education and the stress of
this project, I would have crumbled a long time ago. You are truly my ride or die
companion. We made it!

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Abstract
Food, food media, and celebrity chefs make up an increasingly important element of the
cultural industries. The craze is not altogether new, but the cultural relevance and
ubiquitous appearance of chefs in all forms of popular media is a relatively recent
phenomenon. Anthony Bourdain, although by no means the first celebrity chef in the era
of cable television and omnipresent chef personae, did introduce a new and important
image of chefs in the culinary media industry, what I call the “chef underground.” For
this brand of chef the kitchen represented an escape from mainstream culture and values.
The kitchen was not a sight for self-promotion or entrepreneurism, but rather a space that
allowed for a prolonged commitment to subcultural participation. The kitchen was, and
is, of course, a space of labor exploitation. Yet, for those travelers in the chef
underground the kitchen allowed for the development of a transient existence, relatively
free from outside scrutiny as well as normative notions and expectations of workplace
and lifestyle behavior. By identifying and detailing the alternative social and cultural
dispositions of the chef underground in his writing—and aligning himself with them—
Bourdain at once managed to construct a unique anti-establishment media persona for
himself as well as render the once nebulous group of outsider chefs and cooks legible in
mainstream consumer culture.
This dissertation investigates the cultural influence of the new archetype of chefs
following Bourdain’s rise to prominence. In the midst of a broad cultural valorization of
chefs and cooks, the promotion of Bourdain’s anti-establishment persona through
multiple mass media created a new popular image of professional chefs. The previously
unglamorous career of working in a restaurant kitchen was transformed into a cool and
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authentic occupation and subcultural formation. This dissertation explores the cultural
significance of this re-articulation of chefdom by employing multiple methodological
approaches in order to understand how the re-presentation of chefs and cooks after
Bourdain’s rise to fame has affected the everyday lives of individuals working in
contemporary professional kitchens and influenced the broader culinary and media
industries.

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Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: From Backstage to Front Page 22
Chapter 2: Cultural Pillaging 69

Chapter 3: Gender, Race, and Artistry 101

Chapter 4: Utopia Lost? 133

Chapter 5: Selling the Fantasy 168

Conclusion 210
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INTRODUCTION
On April 19, 1999, The New Yorker magazine catapulted Anthony Bourdain to fame by
publishing his article titled, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This.” The article, an exposé of
the New York City food and restaurant industry, was penned in a self-described “moment
of marijuana-induced hubris”1 by a chef admittedly drawn into the restaurant industry
because of “the idea of kitchens as an outlaw, pirate life . . . the last refuge of the misfit.”2
In contrast to the staid, viewer friendly chef demonstrations that had come to dominate
culinary media, Bourdain presented the life of a professional cook as a gritty, drug-
fueled, and crazed existence. In Tokyo at the time of the magazine’s release, Bourdain
returned home to New York City to a scene he described as “utter madness,” replete with
a television crew stationed outside the restaurant where he served as chef.3 A new breed
of celebrity chef was born.
Food, food media, and celebrity chefs make up an increasingly important element
of the cultural industries. The craze is not altogether new, but the cultural relevance and
ubiquitous appearance of chefs in all forms of popular media is a relatively recent
phenomenon. Bourdain, although by no means the first celebrity chef in the era of cable
television and omnipresent chef personae, did introduce a new and important image of
chefs in the culinary media industry, what I call the “chef underground.” For this brand of
chef the kitchen represented an escape from mainstream culture and values. The kitchen
was not a sight for self-promotion or entrepreneurism, but rather a space that allowed for
a prolonged commitment to subcultural or subaltern participation and thus provided

1 Michael Klein, “He Didn’t Set Out to be a Celebrity,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 6, 2001.
2 Anthony Bourdain, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” New Yorker, April 19, 1999, 61.
3 Necia Hall, “Con Man,” The Age, March 20, 2001.
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marginalized people a way to claim space and assert individual identity. The kitchen was,
and is, of course, a space of labor exploitation. Yet, for those travelers in the chef
underground the kitchen allowed for the development of a transient existence, relatively
free from outside scrutiny as well as normative notions and expectations of workplace
and lifestyle behavior. By identifying and detailing the alternative social and cultural
dispositions of the chef underground in his writing—and aligning himself with them—
Bourdain at once managed to construct a unique anti-establishment media persona for
himself as well as render the once nebulous group of outsider chefs and cooks legible in
mainstream consumer culture.
This dissertation investigates the cultural influence of the new archetype of chefs
following Bourdain’s rise to prominence. In the midst of a broad cultural valorization of
chefs and cooks, the promotion of Bourdain’s anti-establishment persona through
multiple mass media created a new popular image of professional chefs. The previously
unglamorous career of working in a restaurant kitchen was transformed into a cool and
authentic occupation and subaltern way of life. This dissertation explores the cultural
significance of this re-articulation of chefdom by employing multiple methodological
approaches in order to understand how the re-presentation of chefs and cooks after
Bourdain’s rise to fame has affected the everyday lives of chefs and cooks, the culinary
and media industries as a whole, as well as those that consume food media or actual
foodstuff.
Through political-economic analysis, I trace the development of the food media
genre in an attempt to explain the contemporary cultural valorization of chefs and cooks.
This analysis includes both a charting of the historical trajectory of the representations of
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