There has been a lot of discussion about the foul language in Top Chef this season, but it is more then prevalent all over the airwaves. As many of you commented, during just the opening segments of Top Chef you are overwhelmed with bleep after bleep. Although, much to my disappointment, Bravo has decided to not bleep out the entire word and leave enough so that the bleeps please the censors but otherwise are pointless.
I do understand the whole swearing thing in the kitchen but think it unnecessary. I have worked at restaurants and the pressure is intense. I never succumbed to a foul mouth though. I began in the front of the house as a server and, admittedly often used my feminine wiles to get what I needed from the bartenders and cooks. I learned that a sweet, smile, compliment, seductive voice and a few winks and bats of the eyelashes did wonders. When I moved to the line, life changed a little. But, I never swore. I just worked hard and did my job.
There is a great article in the Miami Herald about this subject. They interviewed a variety of chefs and people in the business to get their take. Bourdain feels that it is a right of passage, Colicchio blames the unraveling of the standards of the American culture, Marco Pierre White says he has been there, done that, changed his ways and actually gets better workers for it.
I loved what L. Timothy Ryan, the president of the Culinary Institute of America said at a recent commencement:
L. Timothy Ryan, the president of the Culinary Institute of America, based in Hyde Park, N.Y., argues that the foul language is bad, in the end, for the profession. He said he reminded CIA graduates in a recent commencement speech that just a few decades ago, chefs were not held in esteem. When he sees ‘’shows where the chef is screaming and yelling and swearing and cursing,” he said, ”to me, that takes us back.”
There has even been chefs interviewed by magazines and newspapers swearing up a storm. Yes, this may be the way it is in the kitchen, but as Colicchio pointed out, “”You read Rolling Stone and you don’t see rock stars curse like this.”
What I think is funny is that Marco Pierre White used to be a volatile personality but has mended his ways:
The current crop of would-be Top Chefs may reflect their generation, who grew up in an era of unfiltered media. Or they may simply reflect their age.
”I have sworn, yes, in the early days, going back 20 years,” said Marco Pierre White, the English chef once renowned for his scorched-earth rages. But then he tidied up his vocabulary. “It was just growing up.”
Last year, White took over the British version of Hell’s Kitchen, which had been a vehicle for Gordon Ramsay’s coloratura displays of anger. White immediately cleaned house. ”I encouraged everyone to work hard, and in the three weeks I did it I never swore once,” he said. ”I never belittled anybody once. I got people to want to do their job.” (A publicist for Ramsay said that he was not available for comment.)
I have to come clean, I am a prude when it comes to language. This is not saying that I don’t ever swear. Sometimes there are only certain words that can truly express how you feel, BUT when every other word that comes out of your mouth has to be bleeped it is time to get out of the kitchen and maybe pick-up a dictionary.
I laugh at the idea that these chefs and cooks think that this is the only way and “just how it is” due to the pressure they are under. I wonder if during brain surgery the surgeon is saying things like, “Hand me the F***’in scalpel”?
I would say that the majority of them developed a love of cooking by spending time with their mom or grandmother. Now, imagine Nanna baking some cookies with her 10 year-old grandson or granddaughter screaming, “Hand me the F***’in spatula you idiot! What the HELL are you doing??!!? Get the damn cookies out of the oven! I need another F***’in baking sheet now!!!” Would any of the guys be where they are today, if that was their experience?
Top Chef is just a symptom of a bigger problem. I don’t completely agree with Tom Colicchio, but I do believe that due to the “reality” age we live in, so much in our society is just washed over as “Well, that is the way it is.” I personally think we are better than that. I love the fact that shows like Top Chef has made kids interested in cooking, that they see that the culinary arts are more than gay guys, snooty french men and mom’s baking cookies and that it has actually encouraged them to try foods they may once have been terrified to look at let alone eat. What saddens me in this reality driven world with TV shows and You Tube that the good that comes from it is overshadowed by ignorance and participants who can’t see the bigger picture beyond themselves.
Read more from the Miami Herald.
Read more of the Miami Herald article.
[...] the end, the show’s highlight was that along with the absence of foul-mouthed chefs, we had the pleasure of watching them work with some young hopefuls. I give a ton of kudos to the [...]
Amen and amen. I went through bootcamp and the DIs did not swear as much as some of these people…
Maybe they watched too many episodes of “Chef!”