In this month's issue of GQ magazine, food guru Alan Richman took a glossy, 8-page look at the food of New Orleans post-Katrina. The idea sounds like a good one, so why is the article so controversial? The problem is that the piece was not gushing, not exactly sentimental and, in parts, not accurate about the city and its food.
To date, the vast majority of the pieces about New Orleans have been stories of survival and of working to restore the city to its former state. People rebuild their homes and lives. Restaurants struggle to clean up, reopen and attract customers. Richman writes some about the touching, uplifting parts and the grassroots movements of people to get their lives back in order, but does not write exclusively about the uplifting parts, in fact stating that "New Orleans shouldn't exist," referring to it below-sea level elevation right on a vulnerable coastline. In another controversial assertion, he says that Cajuns originated in Canada, which is true, contrary to what some of his critics have said. However, Richman also states that he doesn't think Creoles ever really existed, but the term applied to a definite and large group of people in the city. He explains his position in the GQ podcast, by the way.
Getting to the food, Richman doesn't like it and has never really liked it. He is disappointed that it is not better than it was before Katrina, and that it isn't what he imagines the food of the area to be - never mind that the people who actually live there seem to enjoy the food! So, any factual inaccuracies aside about the restaurants or the dishes (which NoLA residents are more than happy to correct), the real problem seems to be that Richman is writing from a view typical of many food writers: a New York-centric one. From this standpoint, NoLa food is evaluated as an attraction and if it is a draw enough to make other people care about continuing to restore the city, not whether the food is enjoyable to someone who likes Cajun, Creole or any other New Orleans cooking style.
In answer to the question of whether food can save New Orleans, the only response is to say that it shouldn't matter. The city - food or not - doesn't need to be saved for anyone other than the people who live there. And if you don't like the food, act as you would with a restaurant you don't care for: don't eat there and don't bash it to people who enjoy it.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-03-2006 @ 10:00AM
Charles said...
Cajuns came from Canada before it was Canada. However, Cajuns did not settle in the New Orleans area.
As for the whole "why rebuild New Orleans; its susceptible to the same below-sea-level problems," lots of cities are "below sea level." Beyond that, if "risk" is really a criteria, I say let's stop pumping federal money into New York City. Clearly, it is a terrorist target. IF anyone wants to live there, they know the risk. I don't want my money to subsidize their "dangerous" choice.
Yes it is extreme--I'm just trying to make a point.
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11-03-2006 @ 1:06PM
Jennifer said...
Who decided people in NY set the standard for good food? I love NY but New Orleans is a one of a kind jewel.
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11-03-2006 @ 1:37PM
CigarLady said...
New Orleans was changing already with a lot of the small local places closing because the original people were getting old and no one wanted to take over, Katrina only hastened this unfortunate trend. Something about Creole, John Demers contends not enough credit is given to the planter families and their black cooks who fled the Caribbean and landed in New Orleans. The African adaptation is why you see France and Spain in creole cooking and not anything like it in Europe.
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11-03-2006 @ 2:10PM
susan credeur said...
The entire country of Holland is below sea level--abandon it? Of course not. A good bit of New Orleans was barely touched (i.e.the French Quarter). The levees overflowed--it wasn't the storm itself that destroyed so much such as in Miss. . Like Holland, fix the dams (levees) correctly so as to withstand cat 5 storms.
Yes, Mr. Richman, the Acadiens came from Canada, having been in France in previous generations. They were considered French-Acadiens. More or less stll are-food, language and customs wise. Having lived there for many years and married to a Cajun, yes, there is a big difference food, language and customs wise in the two camps of Cajun and Creole. Oh anyway--try to explain it to someone so cosmopolitan and sooooo smart... I'd rather eat in New Orleans ANY day before NY.
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11-03-2006 @ 5:18PM
Heather said...
Wait, so New Orleans is going to save itself...how? "The people who live there" certainly don't have the money to rebuild the levees in a way that would make the place safe to live. New Orleans would have sunk into the ocean years ago without federal funding and the Army Corps of Engineers. By all means, let them try to sort the situation out themselves.
It's kind of annoying to no be able to read the actual article. Guess we'll just have to settle for totally biased reactions to it. I don't even think I know anyone who gets GQ. Not enough fops in my life I guess.
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11-04-2006 @ 1:18PM
Ashley Morris said...
Heather, you're a twit. It's the very acts of the Corps of Engineers which eroded our wetlands, which in turn has caused subsidence.
Go buy a clue before you insult someone's home.
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11-04-2006 @ 5:29PM
Noah Bonaparte Pais said...
After digesting Alan Richman's absurdly vitriolic ax job on the city of New Orleans, its cuisine and its entire culture [GQ, November '06], I was left with a few burning questions.
First for the writer: What's wrong, Mr. Richman—did you lose your per diem lunch money in the slot machines at Harrah's? Has your wife stolen off with a washboard player? Surely, there must be some source to your reservoir of venom other than a few overcooked oysters and an unimpressed maître d'. As an independent rock critic who lives and works in New Orleans, I know all about harboring unpopular opinions about hallowed institutions; I disseminate them on a monthly basis. But your bitter rant reads less like a balanced critique from a celebrated gastronomic authority and more like the outsider observations of a jerk who's just jealous that he wasn't invited to the party. More malignant than merely picking on a scuffling populace, your rank, error-riddled writing is akin to intentionally tripping a hapless cripple. There isn't a person in this city who hasn't been through hell in the last 12 months, be it from losing their loved ones, their house or simply their job. Instead of pointing out the positive angles to their story—e.g., that 75 percent of New Orleans' eateries have now reopened, or that several world-class restaurants have since started up—you saw fit to set fire to their rebuilding efforts with overt falsities. You are a heartless arsonist, sir, and for that, you should be ashamed.
To the GQ editorial board—the same people who, I can only assume, commissioned this baseless piece of yellow journalism from an ignorant, admittedly biased author and are therefore left to answer for it: What if I wrote food articles for a swank, Southern-based mainstream fashion magazine and traipsed around Manhattan on the company's dime back in the Summer of 2002? What if I decried the supposed "newness" of the New American menus at David Burke & Donatella and the River Café; bitched about being presented the wrong bottle of wine only five blocks away from ground zero; whined about the dry franks and lumpy shakes at Gray's Papaya; and then proclaimed that Spanish Harlem had never existed because I didn't run into a single Puerto Rican during my limo ride from Yankee Stadium to a hotel on the Upper East Side?
The obvious answer is that I'd be unceremoniously dismissed—the very same action that the gentlemen who steward this suddenly afflicted Quarterly will take with regard to the embarrassing Alan Richman, should they seek to retain even an ounce of the fallow dignity it once so fervently flaunted. Only then will you regain New Orleans' respect and, more to the point, its growing potential readership.
Noah Bonaparte Pais
Senior Editor, ANTIGRAVITY Magazine
On Nov 2, 2006, at 1:40 AM, thecritic@optonline.net wrote:
RE: "I know all about harboring unpopular opinions about hallowed institutions."
Obviously you don't.
Best of luck.
Alan Richman
Subject: Re: A letter to Mr. Richman and the GQ Editorial Board
Date: November 3, 2006 3:54:45 PM CST
To: thecritic@optonline.net
Cc: jim_nelson@gq.com, michael_hainey@gq.com, fred_woodward@gq.com, jim_moore@gq.com, erik_meers@gq.com, andy_ward@gq.com, joel_lovell@gq.com, jason_gay@gq.com, mark_healy@gq.com, adam_rapoport@gq.com, john_gillies@gq.com, mickey_rapkin@gq.com, devin_friedman@gq.com, chris_huvane@gq.com, alex_pappademas@gq.com, nate_penn@gq.com, candice_rainey@gq.com, kevin_sintumuang@gq.com, andy_comer@gq.com, greg_veis@gq.com, laura_vitale@gq.com, ted_klein@gq.com, rebecca_peterson@gq.com, leah_zibulsky@gq.com, lucas_zaleski@gq.com, jordan_reed@gq.com, david_gargill@gq.com, kyla_jones@gq.com, benjamin_phelan@gq.com, thomas_wallace@gq.com, info@frenchculinary.com
Mr. Richman:
Thanks for your response, however rote. It's entirely plausible that you were, at one point, an intrepid, relevant reporter; the French Culinary Institute is an estimable organization, its inclusion of you as an ethics professor notwithstanding, and it's doubtful that the dear James Beard Foundation could have erred a dozen times over.
That said, your piece on New Orleans was so poorly planned and ineffectually argued as to be deemed laughable — if not for its lackadaisical reductionism, libelous bigotry and grave implications of serious sabotage on the city's one functioning economic engine. Amazingly, you seem not to know (or, worse, not to care) what corrosive effects your high-profile hack job could inflict upon the region and its ongoing recovery. Such lack of foresight and insight into one's own professional and ethical responsibilities is beyond contemptible. From someone in your decorated position, it's downright unpardonable.
I thought that by listening to your podcast I might better grasp why an honorary like yourself would choose such a lowbrow approach to his craft. I only grew more confused. You sling hateful hypocrisies as if they were poison-tipped arrows from atop an ivory tower; express unprovoked contempt for a culture you barely understand (your friend Leah Chase is one of your "faerie folk" Creoles, you should know); and wield the resources of a respected, 70-year-old journal as a soapbox for dispensing ridicule and racism in the guise of sardonic marginalization. Not to mention the continual mispronunciation of "Louisa's by the Tracks," your second favorite joint in the city even though you don't know its name ("I've never said it aloud"), and your confession of a simpleton's comprehension about the general tenets of social geography ("New Orleans shouldn't exist ... Why have they built there? Because it's nice living on a river"). Following your rationale, it's no wonder 12 million people settled in the equally precarious New York City: Situated as it is, on not one but two rivers, Manhattan must be just swell.
More offensive than your offhand generalities are your misleading, mean-spirited specifics. Could it be that poor Derek Guth, the Parkway Bakery daytime manager you ruthlessly skewer for displaying a photo of his damage, was simply excited to have a luminary like yourself eating in his humble establishment? You liken his ebullience to some sort of masochism: "Maybe the residents of Pompeii had the same macabre sense of fulfillment, pleased that they were being buried in hot ash like none before them." Were New Orleanians not so busy "stumbling out of bars" and "loving the dinner table too much," you pompously posit, we could have done more to prepare for Katrina's unprecedented devastation. Read your own paragraph once more, and then imagine the outcry had someone in 2001 gallingly suggested that the $350 prix fixe at Per Se somehow prevented New Yorkers from properly defending their borders. Your logical jumps would make Evel Knievel jealous.
"New Orleans has always been about food and music, with parades added to the mix," you oversimplify in the same sorry passage. "In the North, where I come from, we like to think we're about jobs and education, with sports thrown in." Might I suggest, Mr. Richman, before embarking on your next sensationalist smear campaign, that you properly educate yourself about the region you are about to excoriate — it might save you and your unfortunate employers from another internationally distributed ignominy.
That is, if these eight pages of repugnant excrement don't first cost you your job.
--
Noah Bonaparte Pais
Senior Editor, ANTIGRAVITY
P.O. Box 24584
New Orleans, LA 70184
www.antigravitymagazine.com
www.myspace.com/noahbonaparte
www.noahbonaparte.com
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11-06-2006 @ 2:43AM
bubbarose said...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_Ob1Cd3M1M
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