American chef, author, and TV personality Anthony Bourdain recently visited Manila to grace the second staging of World Street Food Congress 2017 (WSFC) in the Philippines.
[photo: World Street Food Congress Facebook]
Bourdain considers WSFC's founder KF Seetoh (who is also the the brains behind Makansutra) as his mentor, and has entrusted him to help curate Bourdain Market, an upcoming street market project that will open 2019 in New York. Seetoh was joined by the Parts Unknown host in trying out the many street food items being sold at the Jamboree last weekend, including our local isaw on a stick, served to him by Sarsa's Chef JP Anglo. Bourdain was also able to eat at Makansutra Hawkers in Megamall where he sampled pepper crab, among other food from the famous hawker stalls all around Asia that set up shop at the food hall to sell their specialties.
Aside from Bourdain's townhall-style discussion that was held last June 2 exclusively for congress delegates, the chef surprised the congress audience and press on day two of the talks by dropping by in the afternoon to share his thoughts about street food, and his ambitious food project Bourdain Market that will bring food from around the globe into the heart of New York.
Below are highlights from Anthony Bourdain's World Street Food Congress talk:
On his personal connection to the Philippines:
"First of all I really want to say that I'm grateful to be back in the Philippines. This is a personal connection for me. My daughter, like so many American children, has been largely raised Filipinas. Her brother from another mother is a Filipino kid. She probably speaks more Tagalog than me—she definitely does. She eats regularly in Jollibee in New Jersey. She's more intimately acquainted with the sinigang, lechon. A ten year old American kid who likes balut is a rare thing to find, but she adores it. So I'm personally very grateful to be back here and talking to you today."
'There is nothing more political than food':
Look, I'm often told on my show, in response to the show Parts Unknown, “Don't talk about politics, stick to the food.” And that's true enough. I'm not a journalist, I like to identify myself as an enthusiast. But in fact there is nothing more political than food. Food is a reflection, the most direct and obvious reflection, of who we are. Where we come from. What we love. Who eats in the country—who doesn't eat? The things that we eat are a direct reflection of our histories, you know? The ingredients, whether they are dried, or pickled, or preserved—these are reflections of often long and painful histories. That's how we got to these dishes.
I often say that wealthy cultures that have been lucky and fortunate and prosperous generally don't cook very well because they never had to. It's the cultures who had to struggle and make the most of what little they have who have over time learned to make wonderful things out of—well, all the things that I love and most of my chef friends love. The hooves and the snouts, the tough bits. Cooking is about transformation, taking what we have, however little that might be, whether it's a pig tail or a pig foot. You may not be able to grill it, but over time you learn how to coax flavor and texture and magic out of a humble ingredient like that.
Why street food is important:
Food is something I am passionate about, and food is something that every culture clings to. It is a reflection of who we are. So it's always telling you a story, when they cook for you, when you allow them to cook for you. When you sit down without judgement or preconception and say, “What do you do that's good? What's your best shot? I'll have that.” Often what you have, often delivered in a very human way—something unique with your hands, you know? A street food vendor in Mexico who rolls up a taco and hands it to you—they make it with their hands, the hand it to you with their hands. They make it fresh. This is an intimate transfer going on. And not just making something with their hands and giving it to you, placing it in your hands. They're telling you, this is where I come from. This recipe is a reflection of you know, maybe what my parents taught me. My grandparents. A reflection of my region, my language, my culture, my history. And most intimately, they say, look, this is what I love, this is what I'm good at. This is who I am, and I would like to share it with you.
This is why street food is so, so vital. I've to tell you, I hang a lot with of—I don't want to brag—but a lot of the greatest chefs in the world, three star Michelin restaurants are very good friends of mine. And when they knock off their shift at the end of the night, they do not wanna go out to sit down at another three star Michelin restaurant. This, for most of my friends, would be a living hell. Four hours, nineteen courses, seventeen bottles of spectacular wine. Okay, that sounds like a good thing—I'm sure, to most of the world. But not to them.
What chefs crave—people who spent their lives working with food—what chefs crave after work is a simple, good thing. Whether it's a bowl of pasta, whether it's a bowl of pho in the street or bún bò huế, a bánh mì, a spicy mapo tofu… You know, some lechon, something you can eat with your hands and experience emotionally. Not critically—I don't want to evaluate food. I'm not a critic. You know, I was thirty years in the restaurant business. I don't want to think about my food. I don't want to evaluate it, I don't want to write tasting notes or score on a basis of one to ten! I don't want to think about whether or not my waiter of the busboy is doing their job. I don't wanna be aware of what's happening in the kitchen, I don't want to hear the bell go ding! When it's time for my food and wonder, “I hope that's my plate.” No. I want to experience food emotionally like a child. I wanna be lost in the moment. I want to take a bite of food that takes me to another time and another place, whether it's my childhood or somebody else's childhood, anybody's grandma's food is preferrable in my mind, than a fine dining restaurant. In almost every case.
On the challenges of preserving street food culture:
This is a thing that has always enticed me and attracted me and made me respond emotionally again to Singapore… First of all, you had a problem. You had street vendors, and a nanny state government that doesn't like dirt or disorder. They manage in Singapore, to my mind anyway, to solve this problem in an elegant way. They at least understood that street food and that these heritage street vendors, multi-generational operations of people who have been doing more or less the same thing very very well, over time, that these were businesses worth saving. That this is something to be treasured and preserved.
That the terrible onslaught of fastfood restaurants and generic chains… I mean, has the appearance of a Starbucks ever in the history of the world been a good sign for a neighborhood? No. It is a sign of the apocalypse. Singapore at least understood this is a good thing, let us find a way to save it. They moved it all indoors, in closed spaces, they imposed certain regulations to ensure safe food handling, but you can still go to this cleanest and most orderly of city states and you can line up with people rich and poor—all of whom value the $2.95 bowl of noodles or plate of noodles just as much as something in a fancy restaurant. They understand and appreciate this is a vital thing worth hanging on to, that it is a good thing. Why don't we have this in New York? Or Europe? Or the rest of the world, for that matter? It's shocking to me.
We like food, we're enthusiastic about food, we blog about food, we Instagram it relentlessly, we can't even enjoy food without taking pictures of it and sharing it with other people on the web! We experience food in an almost completely different way these days. Why can't we have this? And this is a question that I, and Seetoh, and the others have been asking ourselves in New York. Why we've been trying to put together this enormous project in New York, that will finally—we hope—bring together in one place the kind of things, specifically, some of the people who do what they do so well and have been doing so for a very, very long time.
On the worst meal he's ever had:
I'll tell you a story. Maybe the worst meal of my life. It was noon, I was on a book tour. I found myself in an airport. There was nothing open but a Johnny Rockets. And I thought, you know, how bad can it be? I'll have a cheeseburger. And I walked up to the counter—I was the only customer in Johnny Rockets. And there were three cooks, a manager, and a cashier standing there. And I said, “I will have a cheeseburger, please.”
And at which point one of them walked over to the grill, picked up an already fully cooked cheeseburger, plopped it onto a stale bun—half on, half off; reached into the fry basket, without even giving the already cooked french fries another dunk in the hot grease—reached in, threw them on the plate. Remember, there's five people standing there, I'm the only customer. Walked over, put it down in front of me, and pushed it forward. And we looked at each other, all of us. I looked at the cashier, I looked at the manager, I looked at the cooks. We all shared a moment of perfect misery. They didn't wanna be where they were, I didn't wanna be where I was. They understood that they were at the tail-end of a long, crushing corporate machine that just didn't give a f*ck…
Street food is the cure to this. It's that single person or limited number of people who have figured out: this is what I'm good at, this is what I'm proud of, I'm pretty sure I make the best version of this on the block, because I have to. Because four stalls down, somebody else is trying to sell the same thing. You see this market force at work very much in Singapore. That is a beautiful thing. And to the extent that we can celebrate that, the extent which we can preserve it, and the extent in which we can replicate it or bring it to places like New York, Paris, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Surely the world will be a better place.
