BOURDAIN: HEZBOLLAH TOFU CAN'T TAKE TONY

ANTHONY BOURDAIN needs No Reservations and no defense--he writes and speaks sans net. Still, I find myself fascinated and unable to reserve comment on the bizarre flame-war involving him (except, near as I can tell the flames lick in one direction--South-South-Bourdain--as Tony's not licking back) and HEZBOLLAH TOFU, a blog dedicated to--shake your heads with me now--Veganizing Bourdain's recipes.

Attempting to make something seem as much like the original as possible without being the original in any significant way is a stunning bit of irony--"it's not foie gras, it's faux gras, folks!"--if not a complete misuse of resources, in my cookbook.
However, comma.
Knowing Tony--which I don’t, other than living hungrily, vicariously through his acerbic trouncing & eating of the globe for the Travel Channel, and having utterly enjoyed being lashed by his literary tongue--he is simply Bourdained to death with them.

In a cockle-shell still lined with briny bi-valve, Bourdain, the roguish former executive chef of Brasserie Les Halles, is Vegan Apoplexy personified (ah, but do they know Les Halles is recycling their grease into eco-friendly fuel for diesel-run vehicles?). The master of French cooking, in all its creamy, buttery, meaty & heart-stopping glory, now hosts Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, where he lustily tears into far-off, often meaty local fare and then, juices running down his chin like a savage, folds his arms across his ever-present leather jacket, leans back in his bistro chair and lights up a cigarette. Satisfied.

I will address this core concept, Satisfaction-with-a-capital S, as it relates to Veganism, but first my trusty disclaimer: I have great respect for everyone on the planet and his/her food choices. Why, I even know Vegans in real life! A mommy-friend of mine has just gone “experimentally Vegan” (which sounds dangerous and painful to me) and is blogging about it for KIWI magazine as the clever EDAMOMMY . She calls me “Meat,” I call her “Cud”--no conflict. She appears to recognize that we are merely two aspects of the same mother cow.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: Vegans are fascinating, but it's true I am innately suspicious of them and have accused them of lacking a sense of humor. There’s often that pesky holier-than-thou aspect I find grating. The one I was once jarred into understanding of by a Vegan boyfriend who sniffed at my frosted offering of (I thought) Vegan carrot-cake: “I don’t EAT honey—honey exploits bees.”

Now to Hezbollah Tofu, an...entertaining blog. Even as it describes the offensive dishes it seeks to “reform,” it is lusciously written in a way which smacks of heavy cream that can’t possibly be thickened with some skinny little root vegetable pureé, now can it?

Not to be a nippy charger of chaud froid here (Shoot, if I had any faith in the world’s vocabulary, I would have named this blog Chaud Froid), but in the case of Hezbollah Tofu, "The ladle dost protest too much, methinks."

“Monsieur Tofu,” a menacing little spokes-graphic who most closely resembles an angry piece of Wonderbread crossed with a can of Natty Bo’, claims to have been “wholly unimpressed with Les Halles,” yet this entire project is dedicated to extolling and veganizing precisely that fare—if not Bourdain himself.
And the name "Hezbollah Tofu" is a plum-pit spat from Bourdain’s own mouth:

“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistant irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat demi-glace or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.” [Kitchen Confidential p. 70]

Now, the collective unconscious tells me that Vegans are slower-paced, serene and sentient beings, a bit like cows blinking into the sun (“in a good way”). That they are peace, love and dandelions (assuming dandelions don’t exploit anybody, but then I had to be set straight about bees). Self-ascribed to be healthier (though, devoid of animal protein they oft-resemble the inside of a fish’s wrist), and environmentally if not morally superior. So imagine my fiendish delight when I began to read the comments section of Hezbollah Tofu—why, they’re a bunch of angry, angry critical people! Angry Vegans! I love it!

Real reader comments from Hezbollah Tofu:
“I am a slightly angry veg-preferential foodie too. Bourdain and his cronies are such sticks in the mud.”

“I happen to be French, like Bourdain, but luckily it's the only thing we have in common.”

“Vegans really rule that world-which only blindly bows to those idiot-elitists like Bourdain...”

“I love this idea and the recipes look great. When the 'zine comes out I'm gonna buy copies for everyone I know, especially the two friends who insist that Bourdain is ‘misunderstood.’ I understand that asshat just fine.”

WHOA! When did the sun go in on these gentle Vegan cows?!???!! Don’t they know that those who live in grass houses shouldn’t throw stones?

[Of note: my favorite comment for different reasons, from the clodded cream with no cumbersome background to subjugate his opinion: “I have no idea what Cafoutis {reader-copied misspelling of the post on Clafoutis} is or who this Bourdain guy is, but I love cherries so this recipe sounds great to me.”]

Marvelous! Because exemplified here is the dark roux of my favorite dyad, "Ironic & Inappropriate." Spurious, furious Vegans, whipping themselves into a frenzy on a blog which would not exist without Anthony Bourdain, while he's off someplace, laughing his ass off, slurping down an oyster or some blood pudding.

Their vengeance is so…serious! Are we to believe that a stodginess about life is the only hope we have for being taken seriously? Switch from heavy cream to half-and-half if you must, but for crying out loud, LIGHTEN UP, Hezbollah Tofu-ites.

Okay, we all know there’s nothing worse than being set to boil about some personal offense, and having the other party blasély move your caustic stewpot off the burner; minimizing or ignoring it. An ex of mine, when called on the mat for bad behavior, was fond of replying with an open, lazy-Sunday smile, “Hmmm. That’s alright.” It was a brilliant tactic.
Because we all know the best way to reconcile the irreconcilable is not to try.

Bourdain again, supporting my fears about Vegan incapacity for humor: “Meat class was fun…I found for the first time that constant proximity to meat seems to inspire black humor in humans. My meat instructor would make hand-puppets out of veal breast and his lamb demo/sexual puppet show was legendary. I have since found that almost everybody in the meat business is funny—just as almost everyone in the fish business is not.”
[Kitchen Confidential, p. 39]

Comments like this must be a rutting boar of reminder for the Tofu camp. Of how primitively goooood meat is. If it’s a fidgety burr of something sadly missed, then I apologize--I do try to understand the folks who are Vegan for "health," or in the hopes of reducing their environmental impact--but at the end of the meal, I simply WILL NOT apologize for my incisors, they are my God-given gift. (Bourdain, at 6’4” must have a rather large carbon footprint, which he’d never apologize and likely take credit for, with a rakish grin).

I will reduce, re-use and recycle, I will support fair-trade and sustainable goods with my business, but I am getting damn tired of my predicament, summed up as usual, by The vegetarian Little Bush Dog: “As a meat-lover in a politically correct world, people often give you a level of disgust better saved for child abusers or Scientologists. It's just MEAT, everyone calm down!”

What will it take to remind us of the basic, maddening elasticity of human beings? The seduction and frequency with which we all stumble ass-backwards into hypocrisy? Isn’t that an acrid little pastille of truth for everyone to suck on. Because let’s face it: most of us suck (Bourdain loves this term, self-applied) in some form. Irony, opposing views--even hypocrisy, these things actually don’t suck--The only thing that really sucks is a flat-out mean spirit--and the surest way to "de-suck" is to flat-out admit it.
Case in point, we all know I’m sweet on Bobby Flay, who Bourdain enjoys reducing to some culinary Prom King, living comfortably ‘neath the scallion-green orb of the Food Network logo. Tony’d be mystified and mortified...(etc.) if he knew the true grasp of Flay’s 16-inch tongs (thank you reader, pink pika) on my heart—and that’s okay with me.
Sweet-light-golden Irish coffee has its place—as does the polar hell-black pitch at the bottom of the pot. Bourdain is the gritty, acrid brew I love for different reasons. Where there is the capacity for meat, there is also acceptance.

Call him a Snob (the world needs more self-confessed snobs; it gives us standards), call him a Purist, call him Cutting (oh, cry me a river of Sauterne--he’s acidic to everyone, and is as self-deprecating as he is charming), I'm not aware that Anthony Bourdain has ever been anything but true-to-form—but then, I’ve never followed the grizzled boar around for 24 hours. How can any raconteur worth his sea-salt possibly succeed if he is doomed to the literal, the meat-deprived, the rigid?

Hezbollah Tofu can’t seem to hone its criticism. It’s too angry for such precision—and in the end, it owes Bourdain too much. How can it truly lambast him without stepping in its own pee?

My take on Anthony Bourdain: Carp away, old man. You have my devoted ear. Let me travel the world vicariously through the soles of your expensive but tired looking sandals, squint at the things you hold up and cradle in your permanently nicotine-burnished hands. Let me ride on your back brandishing a mammoth mutton leg and refusing to apologize as we skid through a puddle of drawn butter. Because above all, it’s your refusal to apologize for being human which makes you a requiem for a cream.

To Hezbollah Tofu (and anyone who wants me to feel like some "green motherhood" and meat-love are irreconcilable) I say: Suck it up, Buttercup.
I think those are still allowed on your people's menus.




Yep, that's Bourdain and me going Balkan.
I sent my video entry, "The Case for Bulgaria," to the No Reservations FAN-atic contest just the other day...
If I win the chance to accompany him, you'll be the first to know.