Will a storm of sexual harassment allegations in America bring any real change to restaurant culture?
In the nearly 12 years since its publication, Bill Buford’s account of his adventures in the kitchen of Mario Batali’s restaurant Babbo has become something of a classic: a touchstone for food writers of a certain generation, as Helen Rosner put it recently in the New Yorker. And I suppose I understand why. Heat stinks to high heaven of blood, sweat and other intimate bodily fluids; it’s nothing if not intimately done, if that’s the kind of thing you’re after. But I, for one, have never been keen.
“Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential has a lot to answer for,” I wrote, when I reviewed Heat in 2006. “Even as he set out to demystify the commercial kitchen, he built it up as a place where only the most macho men could work – and Buford can’t help but follow the same path.” Both books were, I thought, only really interested in one thing: “This might be summed up, not very politely, as: look at the size of our dicks.”
Related: Never trust anyone who is rude to a waiter
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