Come, pupils. Let’s light a cigarette for Anthony Bourdain … or I suppose a Zyn will do in 2025.

In a recent column for “The Free Press,” Suzy Weiss argues that the late chef Anthony Bourdain approached both himself and food with excessive seriousness. That his televised sojourns, marked by war zones and whiskey, were not voyages into the soul of a place, but overwrought pageants of self-indulgent melancholy, which is like saying Porter Wagoner wore too many rhinestones, or Dostoevsky is awfully heavy for a beach read. It may be true in the literal sense, but it entirely misses the point.

To dismiss Bourdain because he saw food as serious is to misunderstand the very act of eating. It is to live in a world where you no longer ask where your meal came from, who made it or why it matters.

Bourdain was a pilgrim, not a tourist. A heretic, not a host. He spoke plainly about things most food television hosts carefully avoid. He did it over noodles, ribs, dumplings, and unfiltered cigarettes. He did it with humility and humor and a touch of disdain for the kind of snobbery now dressing itself in Hot Pocket egalitarianism.

Here we find not merely a bad argument, but a smug, smiling bullet to the head of cultural literacy masquerading as cultural commentary. This isn’t contrarianism. It’s moral anorexia. A pouting petulance against the weight of meaning, as though the worst sin a man can commit is to treat anything seriously. In Weiss’ world, food should be whimsical, frictionless, and accompanied by a soundtrack of milquetoast jazz.

In the South, we have no patience for such nonsense. We know food is never just food. It is redemption, rebellion, forgiveness and inheritance. When we eat, we do not merely consume; we commune.

Bourdain understood this. He treated the family reunion and the Beirut cafe with the same holy reverence. And why shouldn’t he? Try telling an Alabama matriarch whose biscuit recipe was passed down through slavery and Jim Crow that it’s all just a bit too solemn.

Weiss’ call to “take food less seriously” is actually a demand to amputate culture from cuisine. It is the manifesto of the narcotized consumer, the diner who wishes to be entertained and never instructed. What she proposes is not joy, but anesthesia.

Potlikker, the liquid left behind after boiling greens, was once fed to slaves and sharecroppers. It’s the broth of survival. The juice of hungry stomachs and The Great Depression. That broth is not just food. It’s a memory. And here comes Weiss, serving irony over it like ketchup on a ribeye, saying, “Can’t we just eat without the guilt?”

If that’s what you want, then fine. Pull up a seat next to Weiss. You’ll find no shortage of spiritual Splenda on that menu.

But some of us still believe in the sacrament of the shared table. I’ll take the broth. I’ll take the weight. I’ll take the grave, unblinking gaze of Bourdain and the potlikker truth of the American South over the lightweight chuckles of someone who thinks burrata is edgy.

Take food less seriously?

Bless your sweet heart.

—

The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image Credit: Grok