Screaming Doesn’t Make the Food Taste Better
SCREAMING DOESN’T MAKE THE FOOD TASTE ANY BETTER
Attention carrots! Taste better, you orange bastards! Do you hear me? I’m yelling at you!
A Question: Since when and why do so many TV chefs yell and scream at subordinates and behave like such broiling assbrats?
I remember growing up and enjoying the joyful elegance of Julia Child, Jacques Pépin, and other chefs who embodied sophistication and brought class into the kitchen. In part, watching these artists at work every week instilled a love for food and cooking. Of course, it also made anyone who watched — hungry!
Now, the most popular TV “chefs” treat people around them like targets of gratuitous abuse, embarrassing assistants (they’re apprentices, for crissakes!), berating every misstep, and insulting their way to higher ratings and fame.
The most (in)famous dickwad of all is Gordon Ramsey, the Simon-Cowell copying Brit blowhard who gets his jollies humiliating anyone within his stove-sphere. Note to Ramsey (whose overpriced restaurants suck): Your chef apprentices aren’t going to perform any better with you barking up their ass and yelling at them on national TV while preening for the cameras in some twisted macho power play.
If I was foolish enough to appear on that show and Ramsey or anyone else talked to me that way, he’d be knocked off his feet and his face would be flattened in a skillet of oil next to the braised freshly-caught wild pan-seared salmon with lemon capers, Miso, and Sofrito and garnished with a sprig of parsley. Hey, Gordon — go stuff those artichoke hearts up your arse!
I never understood any of this. Does anyone think those herb-roasted glazed carrots stewing in the pan will shake in terror at the sound of Ramsey’s bombastic threats? (* see footnote)
Attention carrots! Taste better, you orange bastards! Do you hear me? I’m yelling at you!
Screaming in the kitchen doesn’t make the food taste any better.
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Footnote: I thought about sports as a comparison (and even my own bombastic personality filled with vulgarity and insults). The difference is, sports is a physical test. So, motivating the optimal performance is entirely justified by the most extreme means. However, cooking is almost the opposite of this. It would be like screaming at chess players to PLAY BETTER. It’s just dumb.
