In the nearly 12 years since its publication, Bill Buford’s account of his adventures in the kitchen of Mario Batali’s restaurant Babbo has become something of a classic: a touchstone for food writers of a certain generation, as Helen Rosner put it recently in the New Yorker. And I suppose I understand why. Heat stinks to high heaven of blood, sweat and other intimate bodily fluids; it’s nothing if not intimately done, if that’s the kind of thing you’re after. But I, for one, have never been keen.
“Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential has a lot to answer for,” I wrote, when I reviewed Heat in 2006. “Even as he set out to demystify the commercial kitchen, he built it up as a place where only the most macho men could work – and Buford can’t help but follow the same path.” Both books were, I thought, only really interested in one thing: “This might be summed up, not very politely, as: look at the size of our dicks.”
It was this line that I thought of first when I read that in New York Batali has stepped back from his restaurant empire following allegations of sexual harassment; that so, too, for similar reasons, has Ken Friedman, the proprietor of, among other establishments, the Spotted Pig, where Batali was a regular; and that, following both these announcements, their friend, Anthony Bourdain, has been doing some heavy soul-searching (“To the extent which my work in Kitchen Confidential celebrated or prolonged a culture that allowed the kind of grotesque behaviours we’re hearing about all too frequently is something I think about daily, with real remorse,” he has said.)
In 2006, unlike most other reviewers, I was critical of Buford’s book. But I was also feebly cautious. I kept my tone jokey; I refused to join the dots. Why, I now wonder, was I not more explicitly condemnatory? I’ve worked both as barmaid and waitress. I know exactly what late-night “banter” means when it’s your backside that’s up for grabs.
Go back to Buford’s depiction of Batali’s world and it’s all there in plain sight: the off-colour “jokes”, the groping, the suggestion that – for a man at least – unbridled greed is thrilling and visceral, and may be applied with equal vigour to food or sex. (Appetites, of all kinds, have often been seen as a plus in the show business-y world of the top restaurant; they denote character.) What isn’t there, however, is the sense that such things might be causing suffering; that Batali might have victims as well as outwardly game employees. Buford may not always like what he sees; sometimes, he admits to qualms. But if his book was a recipe, this would be his good pinch of Hemingway.
Publishing has since moved on, of course. Bourdain and his imitators already feel like relics, which may be one reason for the soul-searching. The question now is: will the allegations against Batali and others change restaurant culture for the better? Perhaps. Friedman’s company has, for instance, recently appointed a human resources director (previously, complaints had to be taken to restaurant managers). My guess is, though, that in smaller, less starry establishments little will change, in the US or here. For the waitress, the potential for harassment is, in any case, not restricted only to her boss or co-workers. It comes from her customers, too: a motley, ever-changing cast over whom even the most forward-thinking human resources manager has no control. Such men and her employer may even seem to work together at times, each protecting the other; in my pub, the customer was always right, and the landlord was always his new best friend. This woman will just go on thinking of her tips, joining in with the grim jokes at the pass, and hoping against hope that tomorrow is better.
