16
Popular Culture Review
This notion is far removed from the chef trade’s actual manual
component, which ironically bears greater resemblance to its machine-age
factory-labor nemesis. In the televised kitchen, for example, there is none of the
division of tasks or relentless repetition of cooking professionally, certainly not
the practicing of manual skills over and over. One should wonder: how else did
they become second nature to the chef on television? On TV, the dish is made
only once—not many thousands of times without variation because consistency
is the least one should expect from a professional cook. What’s more, all of the
manually tedious procedures involved in making a dish only once are omitted on
television. The timesaving provision of mis-en-place prepared ahead and the
film’s editing out or speeding up of the boring parts is crucial to avoiding
dramatic redundancy. The TV audience need not watch the dicing of all four
onions or endure the balling up of each and every meatball.
On television, the chefs mystifying portrayal as a manual laborer
coincides with a comparably powerful picture of the chef in the more executive
role of cultural innovator. For the chef on television not only demonstrates
command of time-honored culinary traditions and techniques but is also
regularly presented as an inventor of new dishes, combinations of ingredients,
fusions of world cuisines, and all manners of preparation and presentation. After
all, though the Iron Chefs show off their manual dexterity, they also bring their
best game of creative originality, bowling us over with dishes never before done.
Moreover, any chef with a significant reputation who gets a gig on television
will probably at some point be featured with a program or segment that
identifies the chef with his or her particular culinary point of view. For Lagasse,
it was his unique take on Louisiana classics in The Essence of Emeril and Emeril
Live. Bobby Flay’s eclectic cuisine with a grill and a Southwestern accent has
been showcased on, among other shows. Boy Meets Grill. The distinct
combination of Swedish and Asian influences for which Markus Sammuelson is
known has been evident on Inner Chef and 1 recall at least one feature of his
signature restaurant Aquavit. Ming Tsai’s fusion was the centerpiece of his aptly
named fornier Food Network program. East Meets West.
To my mind, however, the ultimate representation of the chef as
creative genius on television would have to be Bourdain’s No Reservations
feature entitled “Decoding Ferran Adria.” Since the episode is chronicled pretty
precisely in Bourdain’s collection of essays. The Nasty Bits (2006), there is no
need to go into so much detail here. Suffice it to say that this glimpse of
Catalonian chef Ferran Adria made the Iron Chefs look like traditionalists.
Bourdain’s tour of the chefs Barcelona laboratory/workshop El Bulli Taller and
one thirty-course, four-hour, chefs-table tour de force of a dinner at his
restaurant, El Bulli, had me convinced that Adria must be the Leonardo da Vinci
of postmodern culture. El Bulli is mind bending in the application of both
science and art. It produces physics-defying, chemically and culturally
unorthodox, and psychologically uncanny marvels of food that call for equally
unconventional modes of working, and therefore conceptions of what a chef is.