Food fight! Food fight! There's a full-on food TV war brewing behind hilariously cynical Travel Channel host and chef Anthony Bourdain and queen of southern-fried (preferably in lard) cooking Paula Deen.
In a recent TV Guide article, "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations" host Bourdain said "The worst, most dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen. She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations and she’s proud of the fact that her food is [bleep]ing bad for you . . . plus, her food sucks.”
When the NY Post's Page Six asked Deen about the comments, she went all Southern mama on Bourdain's ass, defending herself and her food tv friends Rachael Ray, Guy Fieri and Sandra Lee from the NY chef/travel correspondent's criticism.
“Anthony Bourdain needs to get a life. You don’t have to like my food, or Rachael’s, Sandra’s and Guy’s. But it’s another thing to attack our character. I wake up every morning happy for where I am in life. It’s not all about the cooking, but the fact that I can contribute by using my influence to help people all over the country. In the last two years, my partners and I have fed more than 10 million hungry people by bringing meat to food banks.”
And she didn't stop there.
“You know, not everybody can afford to pay $58 for prime rib or $650 for a bottle of wine. My friends and I cook for regular families who worry about feeding their kids and paying the bills . . . It wasn’t that long ago that I was struggling to feed my family, too.”
Ouch. I'm not sure but Deen may very well have been calling Bourdain an elitist. Of course, she may not have watched to much of "No Reservations," or she'd have known that he's just as likely (perhaps more likely) to celebrate some incredibly tasty hellhole in Bumf$%^, Idaho as he is to celebrate the highbrow molecular gastronomy of Adrian Ferria.
Bourdain is an equal-opportunity lover (and hater) of high-brow, low-brow and everything in between, who has a notoriously bad attitude toward anything he views as too commercial, too phony or too willfully bad for people.
Of course, even though I love the guy and his show, he should probably be careful about flinging too many of those rocks. Bourdain recently featured not-so-subtle product placement for credit cards on his show (you know, from great corporate cititzens at JP Morgan Chase), and is the world's leading proponent of (unhealthy but oh so yummy) pork products in all their glory.
While Paula Deen's recipes do kinda make me wanna hurl sometimes, and I'd much prefer listening to Bourdain rant about Kuala Lumpur than hear Paula Deen wax poetic about Crisco, until Bourdain apologizes for the cheesy product placements and sends back the money to the giant evil financial corporation, he should probably keep that line of criticism to himself.
Food fight! Food fight! There's a full-on food TV war brewing behind hilariously cynical Travel Channel host and chef Anthony Bourdain and queen of southern-fried (preferably in lard) cooking Paula Deen.