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F*cking in the Kitchen
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One Thanksgiving cooking video to go viral this year shows a white-haired lady—she could be a high school principal or your tomboy aunt—deliberately, emphatically dropping the F-bomb.
Turns out it's a serious cooking demo (despite some unfortunate warm-up bloopers and the unconvincing premise that turkey is inherently bad-tasting), in which San Francisco cooking-school owner Mary Risley seeks to calm viewers anxious about getting the iconic roast right. “Just put the fuckin’ turkey in the oven,” she says, the camera closing in on her face.
It’s a stunt, of course: grandma lobbing language you expect to dribble out of Lindsay Lohan’s mouth. Still, these days, does inserting fuck into an otherwise unremarkable sentence—or video, for that matter—give it raw power? Apparently, more and more of us in food media think it does.
Take the two-volume, 900-page Notes from a Kitchen: A Journey Inside Culinary Obsession (publication date: December 8). Authors Jeff Scott and Blake Beshore set out to effect what the advance brochure calls “the re-envisioning of the modern American cookbook.” It probes the creative process of 10 chefs, including Sean Brock (Husk, McCrady’s), Johnny Iuzzini (Jean Georges), and Zak Pelaccio (Fatty 'Cue), in a format its advance press promises to be “visceral” and “cinematic.”
Superimposed on photo spreads, say, of Iuzzini wailing on a punching bag during a stress-relieving workout, a sort of “re-envisioning” of Ralph Macchio as the Karate Kid with tricep tats and a wallet chain, there are quotes from the chefs whose obsessions are supposed to grip you like the season's first flu. It’s Brock who deploys the F-word (in the book's prepublication brochure), igniting a dullish sentence about group foraging. “What’s cool is you get the kitchen crew out here and we forage around. ... That’s fucking team building.”
For sure, salty language is a publishing meme these days, and not just in books about the pressures of getting food to the table. But there’s something about the prolonged ascendancy of the rock-star chef, the tattooed brotherhood in modern restaurant kitchens, and the broader culture’s embrace of grainy-textured vérité that’s making fuck and shit almost commonplace in food talk.
It’s not like chefs are only now discovering swearing. When I started cooking in restaurants in the 1980s, my boss, an otherwise even-tempered female chef, called me a “fucking idiot” for preslicing an entire foie gras terrine one New Year's Eve before service (seriously, I was a fucking idiot). It’s that food writers and their editors have stopped censoring.
There’s Joe Beef’s David McMillan asserting that “guys should never be caught dead drinking cranberry fucking juice,” infamous fuck spouter Roy Choi talking up the soup from Han Bat Shul Lung Tang, and almost anything David Chang has ever said.
But how long before fucking is as drained of juice as amazingly, über-, and hella are? When will “that’s fucking team building” drop with the same lame thud as regular old “that’s team building” would? Mark my words, bro: won’t be fucking long.
Image source: Chef image from Shutterstock
I agree about the ageism, buttertart! It seems our idea of what people over 60 are like is frozen in the 1950s. Just remember, Mick Jagger is a senior citizen! People who are in their 70s now were young adults in the '60s. Do they somehow stop swearing when they get their AARP card? Not my Mom -- at 77 she still has a potty mouth (much more than I do!).
What I told my children is the words themselves are not crude, it is their inappropriate and over use. Consider, if you use them all the time, what do you have left when you hit your thumb with a hammer.
I'm from New Jersey, we come out of the womb dropping f-bombs. That being said, it doesn't mean it should be every other word. There's tons of younger people I know who use "fuckin'" as a thought-collecting word, e.g. "I dunno, like, fuckin', should we get pizza tonight?" With the new generation of chefs coming up, I don't think this is a mere trend.
I don't care about curse words in any context. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard to my ears. And it makes the person sound low class and uneducated.
The way this is framed is ageist as well as pointless.
Infantile, actually. Straight to bed without dessert.
worst book ever no nudity
I was hoping this article was about Kitchen-Cloitus and tips for clean up.
George Carlin where are you?
I hear Sandra Lee's got quite the potty mouth. Personally, I think a little f-ing goes a long way. It expresses passion that other words cannot, although "blasted," "bloody," and "blessed" are all strong contenders.
Ordinary cursing is everywhere. It's already lost its punch. I like to mix it up with a dirty word/funny word combo. F***bucket or c***trumpet, things like that. Weasel, hose, monkey, canoe, basket, etc...they all make great suffixes for dirty words.
Depends on how it's done. In tante marie's video she's saying dont stress out, relax, have fun. But with some chefs, its overkill in my opinion. Humor in video and even slang language, accents, costumes, skits, stories, etc are great but excessive use of words like fuck and shit make it seem like you're trying too hard to stand out and be funny. Even with comedians it loses its effectiveness...+READ
Depends on how it's done. In tante marie's video she's saying dont stress out, relax, have fun. But with some chefs, its overkill in my opinion. Humor in video and even slang language, accents, costumes, skits, stories, etc are great but excessive use of words like fuck and shit make it seem like you're trying too hard to stand out and be funny. Even with comedians it loses its effectiveness quickly.
I'm far from being a prude about anything and definitely not a fan of censoring but if that's what it takes to get noticed in food media that's sad. It doesn't take talent to insert a bunch of F's and S's in a script. I'm new to the internet mkt, food, publishing game but my question is, would the fucking books sell and videos get watched without sprinkling that kind of shit throughout? If not, I repeat, sad...And if they would, why do it?
Also new to this site. Just signed up. Thanks!
Jennifer-COLLAPSE
i think a pre-sliced terrine is a great idea!..otherwise it just gets f*cking hacked apart.