Quote: (09-16-2017 07:49 PM)Suits Wrote:
Quote: (09-16-2017 06:06 PM)Veloce Wrote:
I could seriously start an entire thread about how much I hate chefs and the things I hate in the food world.
Do it.
I guess I could just summarize it in a post or three.
The restaurant world is a lot like Hollywood in that having the 'wrong' opinion can cost you your job, and there's so many assholes going around telling people how the world should be run. You've got all these virtue signalling chefs talking about sustainability and environmental impact and feeding the hungry...at the end of the day eating at a restaurant, especially the kind I run, is a luxury. Chefs love to believe they're a part of making the world a better place. And in a way, we can, in the fact that people go to restaurants to celebrate special occasions or have a romantic night out. That's great and I'm happy to cook for people like that. But most chefs now see themselves at the forefront of 'the issues plaguing the planet', you know that type of heavy and profound rhetoric. It's not enough to provide good food or operate a profitable business anymore. No, you have to buckle under pressures from insane leftist groups like PETA and allow them to dictate what to put on your menu and you've got to dedicate a page of your menu listing all the local farmers you support.
There's a well-known chef in LA named Roy Choi. His places are decent. He popularized Korean tacos there and spawned a huge food truck industry. Per his Wikipedia entry: "Roy Choi, a former valedictorian at the Culinary Institute of America,[6] is the chief chef and considered “a sort of post-Abstract Expressionist food artist"
What the fuck?
Roy Choi and chefs like him will talk endlessly about how we as chefs "have a responsibility to the environment and sustainability" without acknowledging that doing so is pretty goddamn expensive. They live in a dual fantasy world where everyone should have access to good quality food but that everything should be organic and sustainable as well.
When the reality is, these chefs have been given this platform and can afford to get on their soapbox SOLELY because of capitalism and enjoying the patronage of customers that have expendable income.
Just once I'd like to see a chef come out and say, "Yeah, not everyone can afford to eat at my restaurant, and I like to keep it that way."
Restaurants have gone from a business to something much more than that. You have to engage in some bullshit conversation about "social responsibility" and all that shit. There's a coffee shop that tried to open in Highland Park recently in L.A., a low income ethnic neighborhood. The neighborhood protested this coffee shop, saying that it was a sign of gentrification and they don't want property values going up. We're talking about a goddamned coffee shop. Imagine being a working class business owner, saving up for years working for other people before you're ready to drop $100k into a location and build out the place of your dreams, only to have the neighborhood full of brown people tell you, "We prefer to have a vacant storefront that invites squatters and vandalism, we don't want you here." And then when the story inevitably runs in the LA Weekly or LA Times, there are views that are sympathetic to the neighborhood with graphs and charts spelling out the evils of those asshole white business owners just trying to sell coffee. Incidentally, right before the place opened, they had all the glass smashed out of their front doors and windows. It's insane.
As far as chefs go, I don't mind the raging egomaniacs. I might be one myself. What pisses me off is this current culture of believing that we're somehow making a difference in the world, when in reality it's just. fucking. food.
I feel like I can't properly elaborate on what it is that I hate about chefs...a certain breed. I just can't find the words or pinpoint it. I was up until 5am on a coke/weed/tequila bender so that might be why. But watch this video and you'll see everything I hate about the food world. I mean, the food these guys make looks great. The type of stuff I want to eat. But they're just so goddamn insufferable, between that slack, idiotic LA accent, to the uptalk, to their general mannerisms. Everything about this video makes me cringe and thank god I left LA when I did. I know a few people in the video