Cultural-appropriation of food is not OK so I won’t be watching Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted
Sejal Sukhadwala for Metro.co.uk
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The last few weeks have been a rollercoaster for those of us crying out for more diversity in the food industry and food programming on TV.
First, there was the bolt-out-of-the-blue passing of Anthony Bourdain – a man whose death triggered a massive outpouring of grief from people of different ages and backgrounds around the world.
One reason was that, unlike many other white male chefs, Bourdain didn’t just bluster into a foreign country and act like he knew best. He didn’t patronise or exoticise. He allowed different cultures and cuisines to speak for themselves.
And he did it mesmerisingly, in his own inimitable style.
Then, more recently, we mourned the untimely passing of Jonathan Gold, the exquisitely talented, much-loved restaurant critic of the Los Angeles Times.
Gold had encouraged locals in his city to look beyond their meat-free burgers and farm-to-table dinners, and go searching for chicken feet in hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurants and lentil doughnuts in mom-and-pop South Indian breakfast joints.
Bookended by these two events was the distressing case, in London, of racist social media activity by a chef at the critically acclaimed Thai restaurant Som Saa.
What these events did, collectively, was put the words ‘cultural appropriation’ back on the table.
This oft-used term is frequently misunderstood and misused. For the record, it isn’t to do with cooking the food of a culture other than one’s own – it’s about cooking it without understanding and respect, and then profiting from it.
So when Eater broke the news about Gordon Ramsay’s upcoming TV show on Twitter last week, no wonder it triggered a social media storm.
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According to the press release, National Geographic’s Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, scheduled to air next year, promises ‘three key ingredients: unlocking a culture’s culinary secrets through exploration and adventure with local food heroes; tracking down high-octane traditions, pastimes and customs that are specific to the region in hopes of discovering the undiscovered; and, finally, testing Ramsay against the locals, pitting his own interpretations of regional dishes against the tried-and-true classics.’
Let’s look at all three elements.
The first two are about a sweary, loud-mouthed chef with little understanding of a country’s cuisine, traipsing around with a camera crew, ‘discovering’ their centuries-old ‘culinary secrets’, traditions and customs.
And let’s not forget the bit about ‘local food heroes’ – but why not ask the said heroes to front their own TV show? Why does it take a white chef to ‘discover’ their cuisine and present it as if it were a spectator sport?
Let the experts speak about their own food, let them tell their own stories and please, let’s not turn this into entertainment to prod, poke and point a finger at.
The ‘undiscovered’ has remained undiscovered – to a foreign audience anyway – precisely because the so-called ‘natives’ have been given little opportunity to talk about it.
It’s the third part of the statement that’s had everyone riled though.
Once again, we have a white chef wading into the culinary waters of a country he has little understanding of and telling them how to cook their food better.
Haven’t we been here before? With Ramsay’s own Gordon’s Great Escape, and Rick Stein and the Hairy Bikers’ many jolly japes.
Yotam Ottolenghi, on the other hand, is the only UK chef that I can think of who’s handled other people’s cuisines with sensitivity. His Mediterranean Feast, for instance, was exemplary food TV.
It’s shocking that in the wake of Bourdain’s death, TV programmers – especially of the calibre of National Geographic – continue to commission this sort of arrogant, mind-bogglingly out-of-touch rubbish.
Instead, why not ask more people of colour to talk about their own cuisine?
We had Ken Hom and Madhur Jaffrey teaching us how to cook Chinese and Indian food back in the 1980s – and although there have been a few non-white cookery presenters since then, there’s not nearly enough, and nobody with that level of authority and depth.
Why haven’t we moved forward? What, then, is Bourdain’s legacy?
If, on the other hand, this is how ‘natives’ choose to reveal their ‘culinary secrets’, Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted could indeed be a highly entertaining watch.
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