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Nancy Kruse, Bret Thorn discuss chefs as activists

Nancy Kruse, Bret Thorn discuss chefs as activists

In a monthly series, menu trend analyst Nancy Kruse and NRN senior food editor Bret Thorn debate current trends in the restaurant industry. For this installment, they talk chefs’ place in food policy and other issues.

Kruse Company president Nancy Kruse asks whether a chef’s place is in the kitchen.

The new year has started off with a bang as we find ourselves embroiled in a culinary kerfuffle involving high-profile chefs bent on making food policy even as they make menus. It appears that the issue may be reaching the boiling point.

Things really caught fire in October, when The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by Julie Kelly, an Illinois-based cooking instructor and food writer, who decried what she termed “culinary elites,” comparing them to political elites and calling them out as “condescending scolds finding fault with nearly everything ordinary people buy and eat without offering them the help they really need.”

The object of her ire was Tom Colicchio, chef, TV host and winner of multiple James Beard awards, who has been spearheading efforts to end childhood hunger, and who has also joined the board of Food Policy Action, a Washington-based advocacy group of which Kelly is especially critical. Among its other activities, the organization maintains a National Food Scorecard, which rates legislators on how closely their votes align with the group’s viewpoint on a wide range of issues, like organic farming, food additives, minimum wage and genetically modified foods. In language hot enough to melt January snow, Kelly exhorted Colicchio to “stick to pots and pans and … leave the proselytizing to the politicians.”

The editorial appeared just two weeks before The New York Times launched its first annual Food for Tomorrow Conference to explore what organizers deemed the two biggest food challenges facing the world in the 21st century: how to feed a growing population of the world’s poor and how to reverse the poor eating habits of the developed world.

A panel discussion called The Role of the Chef Outside the Kitchen brought together Tom Colicchio, Mario Batali, another Beard winner cum TV star, and Andrea Reusing, chef-owner of Lantern in Chapel Hill, N.C., and board member of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems. All argued strongly in favor of chefs’ right to advocate and make their voices heard in the food policy arena.

Batali also voiced his support for small farmers and his desire to demystify cooking. In fact, he said he’s “trying to convince people not to go to Popeyes and instead to buy wings at a very good price at their big box store and cook them in their house.”

Well, he’s obviously not an ironist, Bret. The concepts of small farmers and big-box stores aren’t exactly consonant, and if consumers literally took his cook-at-home advice to heart, his restaurant empire might be in jeopardy. As for his slap at Popeyes, it appears that he’s ignorant of the singular role played by that particular chain in broadening the American palate, easing the mass market into untried flavor territory, making a direct connection to American regional cookery and helping to open the door to the culinary revolution that made his success possible.

Then, as we reached the end of 2014, more than 700 chefs — including some of the best known in the business — signed a petition urging lawmakers to get behind a bill that would require the labeling of genetically modified foods. On Dec. 2, Tom Colicchio went to Capitol Hill along with other celebrity chefs like José Andrés, Art Smith and Sam Talbot in support of the petition. A lobbyist quoted in Politico on the subject described chefs as “among the most influential advocates I've ever lobbied with" because they have business perspective but are also perceived to rise above partisan divides.

I’m coming to the part where I typically hand this conversation off to you, Bret, and as I do, I must confess that I feel deeply conflicted. You know that I fully support the right of chefs not only to hold, but also to voice their opinions, just like you and I do in our exchanges. That right is uppermost in my mind because I am typing this at a moment when freedom of expression is quite literally under fire, with the tragic shootings last week of staffers at the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

But I am increasingly dismayed at the extent to which our food system has become politicized, and I wonder if it’s possible to rise above rancorous partisanship. Consumers hold chefs in high regard, even as their disaffection with politicians reaches record levels. Could chefs’ activism negatively impact their standing with the public, ultimately relegating them to just another bunch of noisy lobbyists?

What’s your take on this? Is a chef’s place in the kitchen? Should they be seen but not heard outside of it?  

With celebrity comes responsibility

(Continued from page 1)

The following is NRN senior food editor Bret Thorn’s response to Kruse Company president Nancy Kruse’s take on chefs as activists.

Nancy, I actually chortled when you mentioned that lobbyist in Politico who said chefs are seen as rising above partisan divides. Chefs are as partisan as anybody else, as self-contradictory as anybody else, as human as anybody else.

But these days, as a general rule, they seem more respected than most other people — and not just the famous chefs. Anyone wearing chefs’ whites is accorded much more respect now than they were 15 years ago.

That’s nice. I like chefs. They work hard and for that reason deserve respect. In my experience, they’re also generally fun to drink with and their food usually tastes good. I enjoy interviewing them about cooking techniques, about strategies for sourcing good ingredients and about what kinds of dishes sell well in their restaurants.

When they start talking about politics, or even chemistry or nutrition — topics they might know about, but often don’t — I start daydreaming or cleaning out my email box. They’re not quotable experts on those matters as far as I’m concerned, any more than I’d report on dieting advice from Gwyneth Paltrow or animal welfare advice from Morrissey.

When it comes to chefs who have managed to gain some fame on television — of which there seem to be more with each passing day — they, like movie stars, musical artists and professional athletes, have a celebrity pulpit they can climb and discuss issues that are important to them.

Sometimes that drives me nuts. I’m still holding an unreasonable grudge against a certain Chicago-based chef with expertise in Mexican food who, a dozen years ago, when I started writing about genetically modified organisms, was quick to jump on the phone and expound on his opinions on the matter. But when I called his office several months later to ask about the role of pumpkin seeds in Mexican cuisine — an area in which he’s genuinely an expert — I never heard back.

That doesn’t mean I think chefs need to shut up and stay in the kitchen. Many of them are incredibly well informed about topics that inspire their passion, and because of that they’ve done a lot of good. Alice Waters has made strides in improving childhood nutrition with her Edible Schoolyard, and I have to admit that Jamie Oliver, whose sensationalistic style sometimes gets on my nerves, has helped raise awareness of the importance of childhood nutrition.

Las Vegas-based chef and seafood expert Rick Moonen was one of the first people in the country to notice declining quality first in Chilean sea bass, and then in Caspian Sea caviar, and to raise awareness about it. By doing so, he was able to help prevent further depletion of those delicious natural resources.
Chefs can even make a difference when it comes to non-food-related issues. New York-based chef Franklin Becker is a vocal supporter of autism awareness, for example.

Good for them. But with celebrity also comes responsibility.

I think Julie Kelly, in her opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, cast Tom Colicchio in a light more suitable to her own agenda than to reality. She pointed to the fancy steak that he sells in Las Vegas — $105 rib-eyes and $260 Wagyu filet — without making mention of his ’wichcraft chain, the first unit of which opened in New York City in 2003, and which spearheaded the “fast fine” approach of using fine-dining quality food in reasonably priced sandwiches at limited-service restaurants.

That food approach is becoming more widespread in fast-casual restaurants, and seems to speak directly to many consumers.

I agree that the National Food Scorecard is pretty silly, bunching topics as disparate as food safety, farm subsidies, animal welfare and local and regional food production. Maybe Colicchio is an expert on all of those issues, but that doesn’t mean I as a voter necessarily agree with all of his opinions.

Maybe I like farm subsidies and favor food safety, but I don’t care about animal welfare. Or maybe I’m deeply concerned about animal welfare, hate farm subsidies and think food is too highly regulated when it comes to safety. Or maybe I don’t like it when corn and soybeans are subsidized, but would like to see subsidies for asparagus and rutabagas. Regardless, that scorecard wouldn’t work for me, and those issues are more complex than any such rating system would indicate.

Celebrity chefs have the right to talk about whatever they want to talk about, but with their amplified voices, they might want to focus on topics they know well and are passionate about. That will help them choose what they say wisely.

Conversations about issues related to food and restaurants are likely to be hot topics this year, and I’m sure that you and I will be touching on many of them in the months to come. I’m looking forward to that, and also to hearing what other industry voices have to say.

Nancy Kruse, president of the Kruse Company, is a menu trends analyst based in Atlanta and a regular contributor to Nation’s Restaurant News. E-mail her at [email protected].

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

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