As a reverse foodie-a rudie, a gastronomically ungluedie, a don't-bother-cooking-for-that-dudie'm not exactly a target viewer for the eating-and-traveling shows. I'm happy sitting behind my stacked up cans of Dinty Moore Beef Stew, reading Frederick Seidel. But now and again I'm touched; an image or a moment from one of these shows will move me.
Like the sequence in Season 6, Episode 8, of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown in which Bourdain (God rest his troubled soul) sits down with Sean Brock at a Waffle House in Charleston, South Carolina.
To set the scene: Bourdain has never been to a Waffle House before. Brock, by contrast, a southern chef in a baseball сар, is a lifelong connoisseur not just of the food that golden-griddled, all-forgiving food; that eternal breakfast, mystically charged with the democratic yellow glow of Waffle House neon-but of the openall-hours, come-all-ye-faithful, come-all-ye-fucked-up Waffle House vibe.
"This was action to me," he tells Bourdain. "I would see these people cooking at a pace, and cooking for people who were completely out of control, but still providing hospitality." For his guest, he has devised "a tasting-menu experience," one delirious grease-load after another, and as the food hits them, the two men lose their minds.
They slump and surrender and dissolve into a single namelessly buzzing poetic orality: "Patty melt! Augh... Mmmm... Come on... That's not insanely delicious?... That's not insanely delicious? Ooohhh... God damn."
Why is this so beautiful? Because the ambience and the cultural context-the pure, generous, flavorous, spiritually flowing Waffle House-ness of the moment are enfolded in the reaction: the faces that Brock and Bourdain make, and the noises coming out of these faces, as they express (and share) the intensely and otherwise invisibly subjective experience of tasting something. It's the primal spark, I think, of the eating-and-traveling show.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der October 2024-Ausgabe von The Atlantic.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der October 2024-Ausgabe von The Atlantic.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Boat Fish Don't Count
The wild, obsessive, dangerous pursuit of Montauk's biggest striped bass
The Anti-Rock Star
Leonard Cohen's battle against shameless male egoism
A Brief History of Yuval Noah Harari
How the scholar became Silicon Valley's favorite guru
Rachel Kushner's Surprising Swerve
She and her narrators have always relied on swagger-but not this time.
Men on Trips Eating Food
Why TV is full of late-career Hollywood guys at restaurants
You Think You're So Heterodox
Joe Rogan has turned Austin into a haven for manosphere influencers, just-asking-questions tech bros, and other \"free thinkers\" who happen to all think alike.
What Abortion Bans Do to Doctors
In Idaho and other states, draconian laws are forcing physicians to ignore their training and put patients' lives at risk.
THE LOYALIST KASH PATEL WILL DO EXACTLY WHAT TRUMP WANTS.
A 40-year-old lawyer with little government experience, he joined the administration in 2019 and rose rapidly. Each new title set off new alarms.
THE RADICAL CONVERSION OF MIKE LEE
IN 2016, HE TRIED TO STOP TRUMP FROM BECOMING PRESIDENT. BY 2020, HE WAS TRYING TO HELP TRUMP OVERTURN THE ELECTION. NOW HE COULD BECOME TRUMP'S ATTORNEY GENERAL.
HYPOCRISY, SPINELESSNESS, AND THE TRIUMPH OF DONALD TRUMP
He said Republican politicians would be easy to break. He was right.