Medium Raw

Jonathan Gold, the food writer for LA Weekly, is a hero.

I’m hardly the first to notice. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his dedicated and pioneering coverage of all those places in the LA area that nobody had ever covered before. (His award was the first for a food writer.) He gave them respect, treating little mom-and-pop noodle shops in strip malls with a degree of importance they hadn’t enjoyed before. He helped give a “legitimacy” to serious critical analyses of Thai, Vietnamese, inexpensive Mexican, and less appreciated regional cuisines, which hadn’t really existed before. He put them on a par with fine dining and wrote about them with as much—if not more—enthusiasm, helping to usher in a (very useful) kind of reverse snobbism, a skepticism about fine dining that has only been helpful and a good thing in the long run.

And the motherfucker can write. Oh, can he write. Good, original sentences on the subject of food are an all-too-rare thing—and Gold pretty much owns his territory. As a writer, as a force for good, as a guy who upped the ante for anyone daring to write about food or simply looking for food to eat, he’s a hero. By writing about food, he’s helped change how and where people eat it. In a near unbroken field of mediocrity, here is a man who makes just about anything or any place he cares to talk about seem like someplace you should care about.

Since we’re in LA, allow me to take the opportunity to put Wolfgang Puck on the villains list. Puck goes on the list precisely because he’s one of the biggest, best, and most important chefs of the last few decades. What you think of his airport pizza is completely beside the point. Puck long ago did

enough important, world-changing work to ensure his status as one of the Greats. He was a vital part of the American food revolution. He made serious contributions to changing the whole popular notion of who and what a chef even was—part of the whole tectonic shift away from the idea of the maître d’ being the star—to the new idea: that it was the chef who was important. The chefs and cooks who came up with and graduated from Puck’s kitchens (so many of them) make for a breathtaking lineup. His is a major tree trunk in the genealogy of American cooking.

With God knows how many restaurants and the merch line and everything else going on in PuckLand, presumably, Wolfgang has plenty of money. He is, inarguably, BIG. Maybe the Big Tuna—in a town of big fishes. He is a powerful, influential, and deservedly respected chef and one of the most recognizable names in the business.

So, I was really disappointed, felt…betrayed, when he knuckled under to the anti–foie gras people and announced he’d take it off all his menus in all his businesses.

When more vulnerable, less well-capitalized, less famous peers were standing up—when some chefs were being threatened, their families terrorized, why did Puck go over to the other side? It seemed that of all the chefs in the country, he was best situated to simply say “Fuck you!” to the Forces of Darkness, and tough it through.

Here, I assumed, was a wealthy, powerful, influential man with—one would imagine—many powerful friends.

I figured he looked at the situation and calculated that it would be easier to just give the assholes what they wanted. At the time, I believe, I called it treason. But I’m told the story was a little more complicated than that—and the pressures on Puck more severe than a few protesters out front. He was getting it from all sides, from within and without his organization, it is said. His partners and allies, squeezed themselves, in turn squeezed Puck. Wolfgang is not the only shareholder of Wolfgang Puck Worldwide, Inc., and, apparently, his partners made things very, very hot for him.

So maybe “victim” and “villain” would be more appropriate. I’m not as pissed off as I was. Just really disappointed. Because if not Puck—then who?

Jamie Oliver is a hero.

Before you spit up your gnocchi, turn back to the cover of this book, and make sure you’re reading the right author, let me explain. I hated The Naked Chef, too. And all that matey, mockney bullshit. And the Sainsbury’s business…and the band…and the scooter—all that shit that made Jamie a star.

But I don’t know what I would do if I Googled “I Hate Anthony Bourdain” and saw a million or so hits, like Jamie would find if he Googled the same phrase but with his name. I don’t know what I would do if I woke up one morning, and, like Jamie, found a Web site dedicated to me named FatTonguedCunt.com, where hundreds, if not thousands, of people appeared to be spending half their working hours—and maybe all their leisure time—Photoshopping movie posters and twisting titles to refer, as disparagingly as possible, to me. I’d be afraid to leave the house—seeing that kind of ferocity and loathing.