Bourdainian Dogma No More?

Reexamining my relationship to eating flesh.

Alicia Kennedy, author, graduate school lecturer, and widely published writer, has inspired me to reexamine my childhood idolization of Anthony Bourdain. In her recent essay, On the Grandma Rule, Kennedy called for a shift in what she calls "Bourdainian dogma.”

Kennedy writes, "Then, and now, Bourdain's word was sanctified, his judgments carved in stone." She's absolutely right - my food ethos was, and in many ways, still is, influenced by Bourdain.

In my 20s, I went from mostly vegan to omnivorous for two reasons. One, I did not feel satiated by vegan meals. I later learned that all of the vegan "food" I was consuming consisted of fake lab meat and ultra processed food-like substances, which explains the non-satiety and digestive upset.

Secondly, I had seen a quote from Anthony Bourdain, whom I idolized, where he said,

"To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food."

Bourdain was unapologetically angry at vegans and vegetarians. I attended his live stand-up show in 2016, and he spent a large part of his performance roasting the ever-loving shit out of them. He quipped about the 'Grandma Rule,' and I laughed along with the rest of the audience. I absorbed his beliefs with stars in my eyes.

This was also a period of time when I was nomadic and traveling to a new country every few months, often staying in a homestay with local families, so following the grandma rule was right for me at the time. I think, nowadays, that this is perhaps one of the only highly specific situations where sticking to the grandma rule actually makes any contextual sense.

For years I judged my vegetarian friends for their food choices. I've rolled my eyes when I've had to accommodate them for dinner parties in my home, which I’m embarrassed to admit to you now.

I thought, "If they want to be against the grain this way, they can eat before they come over or just have the salad. They aren't following the Grandma Rule." I was projecting my omnivorian, Bourdain-inspired haughtiness upon my non-meat-eating friends in a situation where the grandma rule needn’t apply.

Kennedy even talks about the cultural and historical origins of viewing vegetarianism as “against the grain” in her new book, No Meat Required - The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating.

It is still a tad overwhelming to accommodate vegan diets when hosting because it's vastly different from the way I was trained to cook. I still struggle to make my vegan food taste as good as I'd like. But I now see it as a fun challenge rather than an inconvenience.

We need to move away from Bourdain's dogmatic "gods of food" era views on this subject. If he were still with us today, I believe he may have already changed his mind on this topic, too.

Kennedy talks a lot about how vegetarianism can be a practice rather than an orthodox. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. This is a healthy approach that should work for most people. She inspired me to reduce my flesh consumption and eat more plant-based, vegetarian, and pescatarian meals, and for that, I thank her.

Truthfully, a grass-fed, rare rib-eye with a crusty, golden exterior, slathered in a peppercorn cream sauce, served with herby green salad, a side of well-done fries, and a crispy diet Coke will probably always be my first choice for my last meal on earth.

But as the great Nigel Slater says, I can be an "almost" vegetarian. An "almost" vegetarian! I love that. To that end, I've been having fun creating some plant-based, vegetarian meals.

Braised fennel is a beautiful base for many toppings, like green peas, feta, and crispy panko, as pictured below. Or BeanStory Co beans, simmered with fennel, thyme, bay leaf, carrots, olive oil, and garlic - as pictured above. Nigel Slater’s cookbook Greenfeast is abundant with vegetarian, plant-forward meals for fall and winter. And his writing never fails to inspire, either.

I usually throw some tofu, beans, lentils, or jammy eggs onto my veggie plates to get my protein in, and it’s satiating enough.

So, to that end, I encourage you to read Alicia Kennedy's book No Meat Required and subscribe to her newsletter here on Substack. Everything she writes is incredibly academically rigorous, well cited, and thoughtful. She's really changed the way I view plant-based eating. 

Thanks to her work, I’ve changed my food ethos. I now see ethical eating and the practice of rejecting profit-driven industrialized food as a way of caring for my soul. And crucially, as a way of pushing back against the quagmire of capitalism that keeps human and nonhuman animals downtrodden and sick.