Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, we want to announce that we have our
Speaker 1: final three shows of the year on the books August
Speaker 1: twelfth in Orlando, Florida, September sixth in Nashville, Tennessee, and
Speaker 1: winding it up right here in Atlanta September ninth.
Speaker 2: They're going to be great, just great, great, great great.
Speaker 2: So if you want to come see the Stuff you
Speaker 2: Should Know greatness, the last of it for the year,
Speaker 2: you can by going to Stuff you Should Know dot
Speaker 2: com and checking out our tour page or going to
Speaker 2: link tree slash sysk. Either way you'll get links to
Speaker 2: tickets and all the info you need. We'll see you
Speaker 2: starting in August.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck.
Speaker 2: Jerry's here too, and that makes this Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 4: Let's see that's right.
Speaker 1: This is about James Beard, the Human and the James
Speaker 1: Beard Foundation and awards. Big thanks to Dave Brus who
Speaker 1: helped us put this together. And I also got a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff from a writer, a bunch of interviews
Speaker 1: in magazine articles on this guy, John Birdsall, who wrote
Speaker 1: a book called The Man Who ate too much about
Speaker 1: James Beard, about James Beard and James Beard through the
Speaker 1: lens of sort of what it was like to be
Speaker 1: a closeted gay man, and then you know, starting in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds in the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the things about the Internet is is
Speaker 2: when something comes along that's kind of definitive, most of
Speaker 2: the stuff that turns up on a search engine is
Speaker 2: interpretation of that. Yeah, it's a bunch of different reviews
Speaker 2: of in this case of a book or think pieces,
Speaker 2: you know, based on the book whatever. But if you
Speaker 2: dig hard enough, you can find like pre you know,
Speaker 2: definitive articles as well. And this is a case of that.
Speaker 2: And it's really interesting to see things that were written
Speaker 2: about James Beard in nineteen eighty ninety seven or yeh,
Speaker 2: twenty ten or whatever, anytime before twenty twenty when John
Speaker 2: Birdsall's book came out, and it's just totally different. It's
Speaker 2: so much more surface level and accepting him as who
Speaker 2: he was basically or taking on face that he was
Speaker 2: who he seemed to be. And then now after that,
Speaker 2: it's like there's meditations on you know, whether he actually
Speaker 2: hated being gay, like a friend said he did or
Speaker 2: did he hate being gay in the mid twentieth century. Like,
Speaker 2: it's just a completely different approach to James Beard. And
Speaker 2: certainly it's a lot more robust and well rounded and thoughtful.
Speaker 2: But in some ways it's like, man, it's too bad
Speaker 2: we can't go back to the happier interpretation of James Beard.
Speaker 2: But that's just not how it goes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So who we're talking about is, like you said,
Speaker 1: James Beard. If you are into food, if you're into restaurants,
Speaker 1: if you are into cooking shows and reading cookbooks and
Speaker 1: foodie culture, then James Beard is a very big name.
Speaker 1: Because if you get a James Beard Award for your
Speaker 1: podcast or your restaurant critic column or your cookbook or
Speaker 1: most importantly for your restaurant, yeah, or as a chef,
Speaker 1: then that means big. That means fame and fortune and
Speaker 1: all the things that go with winning a major award,
Speaker 1: as if it were a Tony or an Oscar or
Speaker 1: a Emmy or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that is generally how it's viewed as the
Speaker 2: Oscars of.
Speaker 1: Food until the Oscar said stop saying that.
Speaker 2: Yeah they did. Apparently. The James Beard Awards were broadcast
Speaker 2: of Food Network in the nineties and they call it
Speaker 2: the culinary Oscars, right, and the Oscars. Yeah, they were like, please,
Speaker 2: please don't do that anymore. We're going to see you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we'll get into his early history. But he
Speaker 1: is or was a chef and a cookbook right, and
Speaker 1: a business owner. He was probably the first American celebrity
Speaker 1: chef and really formed the mold for all to follow
Speaker 1: of chef as brand. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of food.
Speaker 1: I saw some cool interviews with different like legendary chefs
Speaker 1: that were like, he knew more about every type of
Speaker 1: food you could imagine and every ingredient on planet Earth
Speaker 1: than anyone that I've ever met. And this is like
Speaker 1: Alice Waters and Jacques Papin and like the legendary chefs
Speaker 1: of the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's very highly regarded, highly thought of. And what's
Speaker 2: amazing is he was self taught. Basically, he had a
Speaker 2: lot of influences along the way, but he never went
Speaker 2: to any he never had any formal training in cooking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yet he started what we now call farm to
Speaker 1: table cuisine and New American cuisine because from the very
Speaker 1: beginning he was like, it's just got to taste good.
Speaker 1: It's simple ingredients put together in a non fussy way
Speaker 1: is the way it's best to cook and eat. And
Speaker 1: now that's people are all about that. But that's sort
Speaker 1: of a more recent sort of resurgence of that kind
Speaker 1: of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean if you took him now or
Speaker 2: back then and just fast forwarded him to now, the
Speaker 2: only two differences would be he'd be allowed to be
Speaker 2: out as Carrie and he would have to get both
Speaker 2: of his sleeves fully tatted. Right, That's it, because that's like,
Speaker 2: it's we just finally kind of caught up to his vibe,
Speaker 2: totally established it.
Speaker 1: All right, So should we go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: Let's all right, let's go back to Portland, Oregon then
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh three. I can't imagine what Portland could
Speaker 1: have possibly been like growing up as a kid in
Speaker 1: the nineteen tens and teens, but.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of horses and rugged people probably so.
Speaker 4: In his own memoir, he.
Speaker 1: Semi accurately just described his life as very idyllic, in
Speaker 1: the sense that from the very beginning he grew up
Speaker 1: eating great food. For a couple of reasons, one or
Speaker 1: for three reasons. Early one is because where he lived
Speaker 1: in Oregon near the coast. They had great fresh seafood
Speaker 1: everywhere and forest everywhere, so these great wild berries and vegetables,
Speaker 1: organic stuff, because that's just everything was basically organic, pre
Speaker 1: mass farming and pesticide. And the other two reasons are
Speaker 1: that his mom, who was an english woman named Elizabeth Beard,
Speaker 1: was very much into good food and like making sure
Speaker 1: her son ate like really great stuff and the finest things.
Speaker 1: Because they had some money in there. He was pretty spoiled. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. And then the other was his who
Speaker 1: ended up being kind of a godfather because apparently his
Speaker 1: dad wasn't a very good guy, which was a Cantonese
Speaker 1: immigrant chef who was the chef of the house name
Speaker 1: jew Lette, who they were very very close and from
Speaker 1: a very early age, James Beard was exposed to Chinese
Speaker 1: and Asian cooking, Cantonese cooking in particular. I believe that
Speaker 1: jew Lette was also a master breadmaker, and Portland has
Speaker 1: one of the oldest China towns in the US. So
Speaker 1: as a young kid, he was being exposed to all
Speaker 1: kinds of great cuisines thanks to the I think live
Speaker 1: in chef.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you put those two together you get
Speaker 2: a really good approximation of what he did. He took
Speaker 2: He created American cuisine at a time like when he
Speaker 2: really kind of became a public figure. It was at
Speaker 2: the exact same time that we were learning how to
Speaker 2: make frozen foods and building TV trays, and there's a
Speaker 2: whole g whiz thing to like aluminum foil and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. So he pushed against that and said, no,
Speaker 2: we want fresh stuff, we want seasonal stuff. You don't
Speaker 2: want stuff that was picked six months ago and frozen
Speaker 2: ever since. And a lot of America was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we dude, this is amazing. This is like the space
Speaker 2: age in the future.
Speaker 4: Sit down.
Speaker 2: And then the other the Giulette influence was to take
Speaker 2: other cultures dishes and americanize them in certain ways, just
Speaker 2: swapping out ingredients, changing the name, and just making it
Speaker 2: that much more approachable. But it's still something that you know,
Speaker 2: it's still an exotic dish, but it's an exotic dish
Speaker 2: that he's explaining the average American cook who's interested can
Speaker 2: go do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Like I said, his dad was not a great dude,
Speaker 1: wasn't around that much. His mom, who I mentioned, was
Speaker 1: born in England was she ran the family. They had
Speaker 1: a boarding house called the Gladstone in Portland, and she
Speaker 1: ran that and apparently was a perfectionist and very domineering.
Speaker 1: So while she was, you know, orchestrating all these gourmet
Speaker 1: meals for her young son, I get the idea that
Speaker 1: it wasn't the easiest sort of home life with her
Speaker 1: perfectionism and diamondeiring qualities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you didn't get that from his memoir, which
Speaker 2: is another good kind of sketch of what he was like.
Speaker 2: He presented himself totally differently as a public figure then,
Speaker 2: I don't want to say totally differently, but much differently,
Speaker 2: especially as he became more and more of a public
Speaker 2: figure right than who he was in real life. He
Speaker 2: was very good at embellishing anecdotes or you know, he
Speaker 2: realized the value of the backstory to a recipe would
Speaker 2: make people want to make it more and then they
Speaker 2: could share that when they cooked it for their friends.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He went to Read College there in Portland and ended
Speaker 1: up being asked to leave Read College basically expelled his
Speaker 1: freshman year in nineteen twenty one, because he had a
Speaker 1: couple of affairs with other students and one with a
Speaker 1: professor where apparently some of his roommates actually witnessed this,
Speaker 1: like walked in on them, and they very quietly said,
Speaker 1: you've got to get out of here. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if being gay was illegal in Oregon at the time,
Speaker 1: but it was illegal in some states, and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: surprise me if Orgon was one of them.
Speaker 4: But they said, you got to get out of here.
Speaker 1: And the yearbook hadn't even been published yet, and they
Speaker 1: erased every mention of him in their yearbook before it published.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which, depending on who you ask, either like scarred
Speaker 2: him for life when he secretly held it as a
Speaker 2: mark of shame, and maybe that was one of the
Speaker 2: reasons why he hated being gay, or he just you know,
Speaker 2: rolled with it and moved on. I'm not quite sure
Speaker 2: which is correct, but either way, he still had a
Speaker 2: deep and abiding love for Reid College and left most
Speaker 2: of his estate to Read College after he died.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not I don't know.
Speaker 1: I wonder why that happened, because I know they eventually
Speaker 1: came around once he got famous and were like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's a very famous reading and they gave him an
Speaker 1: honorary degree. Many years later, in nineteen seventy six. But
Speaker 1: I don't know, it still surprises me that he just
Speaker 1: for being there one year that he I don't know,
Speaker 1: left in that kind of endowment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not even one year. He didn't even make it
Speaker 2: through his freshman year. Yeah, yeah, No, it's surprising because
Speaker 2: he also could have been like, oh you want me
Speaker 2: to be a ready, now, shove it, but he didn't.
Speaker 2: He very he was very pleased to have been given
Speaker 2: an honorary degree. So after college, his little Stanton College,
Speaker 2: he's like, you know what, I want to be an actor,
Speaker 2: maybe an opera singer. My family's pretty wealthy, so I'm
Speaker 2: just going to go to Europe, joining a traveling theater
Speaker 2: company and study my craft in Europe. There he learned,
Speaker 2: I think the hard way that he had a mediocre talent.
Speaker 2: I saw it described, But in like Paris and London
Speaker 2: and some of the great European capitals he found like,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, there's like these gay communities are just
Speaker 2: barely on the downlow, Like there, you know, they have
Speaker 2: great parties and they have their own bars and places
Speaker 2: to go, like it's totally unlike America. So in that sense,
Speaker 2: I think he learned to appreciate being gay, or at
Speaker 2: least interacting with the gay community for the first time
Speaker 2: there in Europe, which would have been a great education
Speaker 2: for him.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he spent the next I don't know, fifteen or
Speaker 1: so years moving around a lot, still trying to work
Speaker 1: in theater and doing also getting involved in cooking some
Speaker 1: and I think twenty four he moved back to Portland,
Speaker 1: worked as a radio announcer and again joined another theater troupe.
Speaker 1: Twenty seven moved to la for a little while and
Speaker 1: actually got a couple of bit parts in Cecil.
Speaker 4: B de Mille movies.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, very small part, so you know, kind of
Speaker 1: just like you were saying, he apparently he could sing
Speaker 1: and act.
Speaker 4: It just was, you know, he was right there in
Speaker 4: the middle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it wasn't like, oh like he had no
Speaker 1: talent whatsoever, and he was just a rich kid. In
Speaker 1: twenty eight he went back to Portland, more local theater,
Speaker 1: and then started spending a lot of time in Seattle,
Speaker 1: did a semester at Carnegie Tech and Pittsburgh where he
Speaker 1: studied like scenic design and costume design and stuff. So
Speaker 1: he was really still trying to do the theater thing,
Speaker 1: and that's what he was still trying to do when
Speaker 1: he moved to New York in nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he.
Speaker 2: Didn't aspire to be a chef. He basically did it
Speaker 2: to make ends meet. That's when he started. When he
Speaker 2: was in New York, he fell in with the gay
Speaker 2: community there, which was super underground apparently at the time
Speaker 2: in nineteen nineteen thirties. Even in New York, you couldn't
Speaker 2: even hint that you were gay, like you just did not,
Speaker 2: at least not in public. So you couldn't go out
Speaker 2: to bars because bars didn't want you. They could lose
Speaker 2: their license if they were caught with a gay person
Speaker 2: in their on the premises. So what the gay community
Speaker 2: did in New York was throw private parties at people's houses.
Speaker 2: And what he did was he started hiring himself out
Speaker 2: to cook for these parties. And he got particularly good
Speaker 2: at creating cocktail party food, finger foods, cannapis or dervs,
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff, so much so that he ended
Speaker 2: up making writing his first cookbook on that, which we'll
Speaker 2: talk about in a second.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this all this New York stuff, this is
Speaker 1: post prohibition, like there were gay bars in New York
Speaker 1: pre prohibition, which I didn't even realize. No, I didn't either,
Speaker 1: but they basically use prohibition once the things started post prohibition,
Speaker 1: once things finally started opening up again, to say, okay,
Speaker 1: but here's the deal, like no more gay bars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just like history. It's crazy. It's just a
Speaker 2: back and forth of progressive and conservative, progressive and conservative
Speaker 2: like a seesaw. It's interesting because you tend to think
Speaker 2: of everything as kind of moving forward. It would be progressiveness.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't always, No, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: You're talking about those cocktail parties in New York where
Speaker 1: he was making food. He ended up meeting a very
Speaker 1: key person in his life named James Cullum, who was
Speaker 1: a wealthy gay socialite, and he said, hey, why don't
Speaker 1: you move in with me. I got a spare room
Speaker 1: and you can kind of be my I thow these
Speaker 1: huge parties and you're great at this, and you can
Speaker 1: kind of be my live in cater chef essentially, And it.
Speaker 4: Was I saw.
Speaker 1: It was like a completely platonic thing. But he moved in.
Speaker 4: Through culumn.
Speaker 1: He was able to work all these other parties, meet
Speaker 1: all the sort of well healed gay New Yorkers with money,
Speaker 1: and like you said, he made quite a name for himself.
Speaker 1: And he was doing this, like you said, with these
Speaker 1: sort of simple or dervs and finger foods, that he
Speaker 1: would make his own. One thing that he's still very
Speaker 1: famous for was his onion sandwich.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I looked up this thing. I gotta make one now.
Speaker 2: Really I was not inspired to, Oh.
Speaker 1: Man, I think they looked delicious. I saw Jacqupapine make one.
Speaker 1: Maybe I had some with sure. But you take some
Speaker 1: bryoshe and you cut, like use a biscuit cutter or
Speaker 1: something to cut it into a circle so it doesn't
Speaker 1: have any crust. You cut two of these. You make
Speaker 1: up some homemade mayo ideally or dukes of pure in
Speaker 1: a pinch, and then you spread mayo in each side.
Speaker 1: You slice very thinly. You cut an onion in half,
Speaker 1: and then very thinly slice you know, a half moon
Speaker 1: of onion and a half moon of onion, and put
Speaker 1: those together so it is, you know, covering the whole sandwich.
Speaker 1: And then you spread mayo along the outer rim of
Speaker 1: this sandwich. Once you put it together, and then roll
Speaker 1: that in either chopped parsley or some combination of chopped
Speaker 1: herbs that you like, and it just it looked really
Speaker 1: good and it looks very simple, and everyone goes nuts
Speaker 1: on it. So I've got to try it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, let me know how it is, and if
Speaker 2: it is particularly good, I'll try it for sure. And
Speaker 2: it's not like I'm like that's gross. I just I'm like,
Speaker 2: this is missing something that would make me want to
Speaker 2: eat it, like where's the deli meat?
Speaker 1: He apparently wealthy, and this is something birds All wrote
Speaker 1: about that, like wealthy straight parties at the time, they
Speaker 1: had like really fancy stuff like you know, caviare and truffles,
Speaker 1: but the food itself, apparently, and the finger foods and
Speaker 1: sandwiches are all kind of boring, and apparently this stuff
Speaker 1: was just way better and more creative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so again, he made his name as a catering chef.
Speaker 2: He founded a company called or derv Inc with a
Speaker 2: brother and sister, Bill and Irma Roade, and at the
Speaker 2: same time he learned a lot from these people. He
Speaker 2: also learned a lot from a woman named Jean Wilson
Speaker 2: who was a socialite in New York, and all three
Speaker 2: of them kind of took him under their wing, taught
Speaker 2: him things like the value of like going out and
Speaker 2: finding good ingredients at stores in New York, like how
Speaker 2: to appreciate wine or at least pretend like you understand
Speaker 2: how to appreciate wine. From Bill Road. He learned the
Speaker 2: value of adding a story, a backstory to a dish.
Speaker 2: How important that was. And it was another it was
Speaker 2: if his education came in like peaks and valleys. This
Speaker 2: was another big peak in his culinary education, you could say.
Speaker 2: And he went on in I think nineteen forty, just
Speaker 2: a few years after he started cooking. I think, right,
Speaker 2: didn't you say it was thirty seven that he really started.
Speaker 1: I mean he moved to New York in thirty seven,
Speaker 1: and I think kind of ditched everything else in like
Speaker 1: thirty eight and thirty nine.
Speaker 2: Okay, So in three years he went from teaching himself
Speaker 2: how to cook basically hanging out with New York society
Speaker 2: to writing his first cookbook in nineteen forty, which he
Speaker 2: claimed over written in six weeks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, shortly thereafter. And I guess we'll take a break
Speaker 1: after this. But he was drafted into the army. I
Speaker 1: saw he enlisted and that he was drafted. So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure which is true. But I was all drafted
Speaker 1: more often than enlisted, and UH that ended his catering
Speaker 1: business for a couple of reasons. I think even before
Speaker 1: he was drafted, the food rationing basically ended that catering business.
Speaker 1: But he was drafted in forty two UH into a
Speaker 1: cryptography school and served in the US Seaman Service in
Speaker 1: places like Brazil and Puerto Rico and Panama and France.
Speaker 1: So he's in a way still kind of continuing his
Speaker 1: food education by living in these places with awesome food.
Speaker 2: Man, that's super interesting.
Speaker 4: Should we take that break, Yeah, let's all right. We'll
Speaker 4: be right back with Moron James.
Speaker 3: Bear Stoffy, Josh, I want to learn about a terris
Speaker 3: ort and college Taradactyl, how to take a berger bout
Speaker 3: fractalk Is Khan, that's a little hunt, the Lizzie Boarders,
Speaker 3: plane everything, and Josi.
Speaker 4: Sport up. Jerry.
Speaker 2: All right, So I mentioned Gene Wilson, Bill and Irma Road.
Speaker 2: They had a huge impact on his culinary education. I
Speaker 2: should say, nothing formal again, like that was just hanging
Speaker 2: out with the right people who kind of provided this
Speaker 2: and that and sometimes recipes. He co owned the catering
Speaker 2: business with them, but the first chance he got to
Speaker 2: cut them out credit wise, he took in his nineteen
Speaker 2: forty cookbook can or dirves and Cannipates. There's no mention
Speaker 2: of them. There's no mention of any of the order
Speaker 2: of ink, or of their ownership and order of ink,
Speaker 2: I should say. And he kind of, at least in retrospect,
Speaker 2: became a little bit famous for, at the very least
Speaker 2: put it as nicely as possible, not giving credit where
Speaker 2: credit is due, at worst, using people and then burning
Speaker 2: the bridge in an effort to climb ever upward.
Speaker 1: I saw that onion sandwich recipe might have even been
Speaker 1: from the roads. Yeah, I'm not sure about that one
Speaker 1: hundred percent, but that could be an example.
Speaker 4: He wrote.
Speaker 1: He was very prolific, wrote a lot of books. From
Speaker 1: nineteen forty to nineteen eighty three. He had twenty cookbooks,
Speaker 1: including nineteen fifty nine sort of his seminal work, the
Speaker 1: James Beard Cookbook that had it was kind of like
Speaker 1: a kitchen bible, which apparently he wasn't a big fan
Speaker 1: of those kinds of books, and this was not even
Speaker 1: close to his favorite of his own, but it was
Speaker 1: the best selling and had everything in there from how
Speaker 1: to make like a French Castle, aid to how to
Speaker 1: Boil Water, and was I think the first cookbook to
Speaker 1: feature the chef on the cover. It was just unheard
Speaker 1: of to do at the time. It was just you know,
Speaker 1: the joy of cooking or whatever, you just have text
Speaker 1: and he was the first person to put his mug
Speaker 1: on there. And again that's just sort of laid the
Speaker 1: groundwork for chef as brand. He was this really big
Speaker 1: guy who was six ' three weighed over three hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: He eventually was bald and kind of looked like an
Speaker 1: Uncle Fester type, but apparently he just had no self
Speaker 1: consciousness about the way he looked and a bigger person
Speaker 1: like eating a lot, because he ate a ton and
Speaker 1: consistently talked about how much he'd loved to eat a
Speaker 1: lot of food.
Speaker 2: So much so that he had one of the first
Speaker 2: cooking shows, maybe the first televised cooking show in America
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty six. It was titled I Love to Eat.
Speaker 4: That was his catchphrase.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he would say that at the either the end
Speaker 2: of the beginning of everyone. It only ran for a year,
Speaker 2: and from what I could tell, that was his only
Speaker 2: TV show. He made some appearances on other shows like
Speaker 2: The Mike Douglas Show and other stuff like that, but
Speaker 2: that was his TV show. That was his one TV show. Instead,
Speaker 2: he ended up making his his name more with like
Speaker 2: cookbooks and a cooking school and all of that. But
Speaker 2: on that show, apparently you can see the beginnings of
Speaker 2: that chef brand of his, where you know, he had
Speaker 2: a big appetite but only for delicious food, right, so
Speaker 2: he had no problem with eating and eating and eating,
Speaker 2: but it had to.
Speaker 4: Be good food.
Speaker 2: It wasn't going to waste that on any junk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I looked for clips of
Speaker 1: this show. It's really I found a couple of short ones.
Speaker 1: It's really kind of hard to find stuff because he
Speaker 1: just didn't preserve you know, we've talked about it before
Speaker 1: media like they do now. But I did read in
Speaker 1: one of the birds All interviews where he was saying
Speaker 1: that despite being in the closet, he would drop he said,
Speaker 1: gay men at the time, he said they would drop
Speaker 1: called what they called hat pins. So just little references
Speaker 1: or a little the way they said something to kind
Speaker 1: of as code of like hey I'm gay, like you
Speaker 1: see what I'm putting down here, and he would do
Speaker 1: that on his TV show, and he would drop little
Speaker 1: hat pins just sort of to the gay community at
Speaker 1: least so they.
Speaker 4: Would know that he was gay. But straight people are
Speaker 4: just like this guy's just so fun.
Speaker 2: Yes, I wonder what community does that now, and we don't.
Speaker 4: We're not aware of it now. Who knows.
Speaker 2: I'd be very curious if you know. Right in But yeah,
Speaker 2: apparently was. He was very much like that until that
Speaker 2: first best selling cookbook, that James Beard Cookbook came out.
Speaker 2: I read that any semblance of that was totally stripped out,
Speaker 2: and his brand now was a manly man who loved food,
Speaker 2: and I saw was so is so enthralled by food
Speaker 2: and the good life that he didn't even like a
Speaker 2: relationship with women wasn't even on his radar. He was
Speaker 2: too busy enjoying life kind of thing. Yeah, that was
Speaker 2: kind of how he was presented starting in the late fifties.
Speaker 1: There's a Instagram guy I follow. I can't I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to pronounce it anyway, because he's like Danish
Speaker 1: or something. I'm not sure what he is, but he
Speaker 1: lives in the beautiful mountains of one of those Scandinavian countries.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: But his stuff is great because he cooks sort of
Speaker 1: this like great looking food but in a very tik
Speaker 1: took way. It's like a big he'll cook it on
Speaker 1: a big stone that's been heated by this fire he
Speaker 1: makes himself. But it's like really elevated sort of camping food.
Speaker 1: And he gives stuff to his dog at the end
Speaker 1: of everyone and he never speaks or anything.
Speaker 4: It's all silent.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Speaker 4: Have you seen this?
Speaker 2: But is he like a kind of like a wild
Speaker 2: man and he lives in a tent.
Speaker 4: He is a wild man in a tent.
Speaker 2: Yes, I have seen it. And he like he'll point
Speaker 2: to stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because he may not speak English.
Speaker 1: But I was just thinking, like nothing would make me
Speaker 1: happier than if at the end of one of these
Speaker 1: like some guy just walks in from the mountains and
Speaker 1: they just start making out of the end.
Speaker 4: Sure, I'd be like, all right, there you go, in,
Speaker 4: there you go, James Beard, do it.
Speaker 1: So we talked about the fact that he he would present,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of fancy foods in a simpler way
Speaker 1: for Americans that may have been intimidated by like you know,
Speaker 1: the classic French cooking and stuff like that. And one
Speaker 1: good example is in his cookbook from nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: the Fireside Cookbook, when he basically made what is an
Speaker 1: omelet peissant, which is a French for a peasant omelet,
Speaker 1: but he called it a country omelet, and all he
Speaker 1: did was a country All he did instead of putting
Speaker 1: salted pork belly in this omelet that also has potatoes,
Speaker 1: onions and parsley, was put in smoked bacon, and he
Speaker 1: called it a country omelet, and it just seemed completely American.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what he would do. Like he would, I
Speaker 2: guess in the parlance of today, he would appropriate other
Speaker 2: cultures food and alter it just enough to make it Americanized.
Speaker 2: He wasn't doing it from what I could tell, because
Speaker 2: he was unimaginative, because he couldn't come up with his
Speaker 2: own stuff. He was from an appreciation of those other
Speaker 2: culture's dishes, and he was americanizing it not out of
Speaker 2: a disrespect to that culture originating it, but out of
Speaker 2: making it more accessible to American cooks. And in doing
Speaker 2: that he is credited with basically coming up with American cuisine,
Speaker 2: and it's hilarious. But it's so American that American cuisine
Speaker 2: is predicated on other culture's food. And it was a
Speaker 2: huge debt to front to French cooking, and large part
Speaker 2: it's because people like James Beard and James Beard in
Speaker 2: particular took French food and americanized it and made American
Speaker 2: American cuisine in the process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Dave makes a very good point, like if you
Speaker 1: think of the nineteen sixties, what might be on in
Speaker 1: a recipe book or a menurobably, because like you said,
Speaker 1: that was sort of when TV dinners were all the
Speaker 1: rage and stuff like that, and it just didn't seem
Speaker 1: like there was a lot of attention being paid.
Speaker 4: To real quality like that. But that's all come back
Speaker 4: in a big way.
Speaker 1: And if you read some of his recipes from the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, and they say, and he's writing about roasted
Speaker 1: figs and pergudo and sun chokes and savicha and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, Like, I didn't know about any of that
Speaker 1: stuff in the eighties and nineties, even probably, and he
Speaker 1: was writing about the stuff in the nineteen fifties and sixties.
Speaker 2: It started to become a thing in the eighties with
Speaker 2: the yuppies, started to and they can thank James Beard
Speaker 2: for that.
Speaker 4: But you're just thinking of American snacle.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I'm totally at what is it? Ah?
Speaker 4: Is it la cirque? No? No, I shouldn't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know. We'll figure it out.
Speaker 4: That scene with the business cards.
Speaker 2: It's great. So yes, but that's exactly what I was
Speaker 2: thinking of.
Speaker 4: But you're right, so yes.
Speaker 2: But before that, like there's an example of him in
Speaker 2: his TV show in nineteen forty five or six talking
Speaker 2: about this exotic oil that people should go route out,
Speaker 2: like it's hard to find, but it's worth it's worth
Speaker 2: the effort. And it was called olive oil. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: like this was like this is a time when that
Speaker 2: was not You could not find that anywhere, maybe in
Speaker 2: like little Italy, but you did not find it like
Speaker 2: mass produced in your grocery store like he used large exactly.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons why you find it mass
Speaker 2: produced in your grocery store now is because James Beard
Speaker 2: introduced it to America. Like that's the effect that this
Speaker 2: guy had. He's everywhere. His influence is everywhere still today
Speaker 2: and not just still today, Like finally today, his influence
Speaker 2: has really kind of come into full fruition.
Speaker 4: Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2: I love talking about food.
Speaker 4: And I'm hungry. Should we take that second break?
Speaker 2: Sure, let's go. Let's go get some onion sandwiches.
Speaker 1: All right, well, and we'll talk about the James Beard
Speaker 1: Foundation and his legacy right after this.
Speaker 4: Stoff, Josh.
Speaker 2: Shop stop.
Speaker 3: I want to learn about a Terris Hortan College hoadactyl,
Speaker 3: how to take a perfect movement, all about fractal think
Speaker 3: is gone.
Speaker 4: That's a little hunt the Lizzie and josif we should
Speaker 4: know no word up Jerry.
Speaker 1: Okay, So now we move on. Now that we know
Speaker 1: the man pretty good. Thirty minutes on James Beard, I think.
Speaker 1: So we'll talk about his foundation. In the seventies in
Speaker 1: New York, he bought a townhouse at one sixty seven
Speaker 1: West twelfth Street in Greenwich Village. And now he was
Speaker 1: sort of a little more on the down low. He
Speaker 1: wasn't on TV as much. He wasn't he was still
Speaker 1: writing cookbooks, but he was. He was just a little
Speaker 1: more private. I guess at that point he was free
Speaker 1: in the seventies in New York, especially in Greenwich Village,
Speaker 1: to be a little more out. Although you know, apparently
Speaker 1: he was just sort of a homebody with his longtime
Speaker 1: partner who was a pastry chef, Gino Cofaci, and would
Speaker 1: again throw these great parties, these great holiday meals. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one he started, and this is a big
Speaker 1: part of his legacy today. He founded with a restaurant
Speaker 1: critic Gaale, Green City Meals on Wheels and to date,
Speaker 1: and this is basically it's not officially Meals on Wheels,
Speaker 1: but just a similar thing that covers New York City.
Speaker 1: They have served since nineteen eighty one fifty million meals
Speaker 1: to people who can't get out of the house in
Speaker 1: New York.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. I was like, wait a minute, was this
Speaker 2: the beginning of meals on wheels? And no, no, well
Speaker 2: it's an apparently meals on wheels have been around since
Speaker 2: the forties. Yeah, so I'm sure we talked about in
Speaker 2: our Meals on Wheels episode.
Speaker 4: But still, that's right.
Speaker 2: It's definitely worth tipping your hat to for sure. Absolutely
Speaker 2: so the whole thing started the James Beard Foundation in
Speaker 2: an effort to buy back his Greenwich Village townhouse from
Speaker 2: Reid College. Remember he'd left the bulk of his estate
Speaker 2: to read. And I get the impression as one of
Speaker 2: his students who became a colleague, Peter Cump, who kind
Speaker 2: of took the reins of this and got other people,
Speaker 2: including Julia Child, kind of to champion this cause. And
Speaker 2: it was wildly successful because James Beard died in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five and they owned the townhouse by nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: so then they were like, okay, what do we do next.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he, by the way, he lived to be
Speaker 1: eighty one, So despite his his size and how much
Speaker 1: kind of rich foods he ate, eighty one's not too bad,
Speaker 1: not bad at all. Heart failure finally got him. But
Speaker 1: in like you said, they got the James Beard House,
Speaker 1: which they renamed officially James Beard House, still there today.
Speaker 1: And I think their first sort of mission was to
Speaker 1: quote provide a center for the culinary arts and to
Speaker 1: continue to foster interest the interest James Beard inspired in
Speaker 1: all aspects of food, it's preparation, presentation, and of course enjoyment.
Speaker 1: And you know, it was sort of a sort of
Speaker 1: a humble start I think for what ended up being
Speaker 1: a very big deal. And part of that was kind
Speaker 1: of kicked off the very next year, in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: when Vodyangpak.
Speaker 4: Who is known it's so fun to listen to he is.
Speaker 2: I love hearing that guy talk. And at the time,
Speaker 2: back then he was known as Walter Pagowski. Still is
Speaker 2: that his name?
Speaker 4: Oh god, I believe every joke you tell.
Speaker 2: No, I'm killing it.
Speaker 4: Oh gosh.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear a interview or just a
Speaker 1: conversation between Wolfgang Puck and Werner Hearts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally, that would be the best. Bock said, hey,
Speaker 4: can I can I host at your house?
Speaker 1: And they said, sure, you can come and cook at
Speaker 1: the James Beard House and host a dinner. And it
Speaker 1: was a big hit apparently, so he said, why don't
Speaker 1: we do this like once a month, had these big
Speaker 1: dinners prepared by either big famous chefs or someone who's
Speaker 1: up and coming, and all of a sudden, the James
Speaker 1: Beard House itself starts to get its own reputation.
Speaker 2: Yes, but I'll bet a dinner there's at once really
Speaker 2: great and also very trying to hear some of the
Speaker 2: people around the table talking about it.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I want to someone has an end invite
Speaker 1: Josh and I and you, me and Emily to come.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, but if I'm sitting there like rolling my eyes.
Speaker 2: Don't get mad.
Speaker 4: The onion sandwich please.
Speaker 2: So this Peter Cump guy, he's like, I'm going to
Speaker 2: memorialize my teacher one way or another. I mentioned Julia
Speaker 2: Child really, I don't know if we said that. She
Speaker 2: and James Beer were very good friends. Yeah, and at
Speaker 2: a time, probably seventies eighties, they were the two most
Speaker 2: well known chefs in America far and away, which is
Speaker 2: remarkable because again, neither one of them were formally trained.
Speaker 2: I think they were both self taught. Yeah, so Julia
Speaker 2: Child's on board, but Peter Cump is really kind of
Speaker 2: running the show here. And they start handing out awards
Speaker 2: pretty quickly after the Beard House is established and the
Speaker 2: Beard Foundation is established. And at the time they give
Speaker 2: the award out for great American chefs, and you could
Speaker 2: expect a certificate, a commemorative chef knife, chef's knife.
Speaker 4: Nice, and that's about.
Speaker 2: It at the time for the first few iterations of
Speaker 2: this award.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, of course, a little recognition for those in
Speaker 1: the know. But it's not like now where a lot
Speaker 1: of people now are like, it's a James Beard restaurant,
Speaker 1: we got to go there totally like just from people
Speaker 1: watching you know, Food Network and stuff like that in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety.
Speaker 4: So they just said, bought this house in the.
Speaker 1: Like eighty what do you say, eighty seven, eighty six,
Speaker 1: eighty six, and got things going sort of in the
Speaker 1: late eighties, and then in nineteen ninety the publisher of
Speaker 1: The Who's Who of Cooking in America said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we'd like to sell this property, and come said I'll
Speaker 1: take it and bought the rights to At the time,
Speaker 1: it was sort of the best honors book for top chefs,
Speaker 1: and he said, well, here, let's expand it though, and
Speaker 1: let's not have just chefs, but let's have food at
Speaker 1: critics and restaurants and wine Somlia's and wine people and
Speaker 1: cookbooks and eventually, you know, podcasts and blogs and let's
Speaker 1: give awards for all kinds of things. And eventually that
Speaker 1: became the James Beard Chef and Restaurant Awards that we
Speaker 1: still have today.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think they actually had them in parallel for
Speaker 2: a little while, and then they shut down the Who's
Speaker 2: Who of Cooking in America because those awards were only
Speaker 2: given out by previous award, so it became kind of
Speaker 2: an ara Borros. It wasn't very expansive. It was very
Speaker 2: tight knit. But the James Beard Chef and Restaurant Awards,
Speaker 2: at the very least were meant to be more far
Speaker 2: looking than the who's who of cooking in America was. Yes,
Speaker 2: whether they achieved that or not depends on who you
Speaker 2: ask in what year you asked it. But eventually, in
Speaker 2: the early nineties it started to become a at least
Speaker 2: that you could see the outlines of the prestigious award
Speaker 2: that it is today.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: The first awards in ninety one were held on the
Speaker 1: MS New Yorker Cruise ship, Dinner Cruise Ship and the
Speaker 1: Best Chef, and they give them out I think New York, Texas,
Speaker 1: and California now each have are their own region and
Speaker 1: then everyone else is split up into like Southeast and
Speaker 1: Northeast and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: Can fly over exactly.
Speaker 1: But that first year, see if you recognized any of
Speaker 1: these names. The very first year of those awards, Southeast
Speaker 1: winner was Emerald Legassi.
Speaker 2: Isn't he the one who'd be like, I guarantee No,
Speaker 2: Well then no, I haven't heard of him.
Speaker 4: He's the bam guy.
Speaker 1: The Midwest was Chef Rick Bayliss Bobby Flay one rising
Speaker 1: star chef.
Speaker 2: Wasn't he married to the actor from Law and Order
Speaker 2: Bobby Flaked assistant DA for a while.
Speaker 4: Oh, I don't know, Yeah, maybe that's a yes.
Speaker 1: A chef Nancy Silverton, who was a legend, won Pastry
Speaker 1: Chef in ninety one, then one for her restaurant Campanil
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, and then one for Best
Speaker 1: Overall Chef in twenty fourteen, so she's a three time winner.
Speaker 4: And if you're wondering who.
Speaker 1: Won Best Outstanding or overall Outstanding Chef that very.
Speaker 4: First year, hey, look at me. It's a really very
Speaker 4: fuss winner.
Speaker 2: Very nice. That's appropriate because he all put the James
Speaker 2: Beard House on the map.
Speaker 1: Oh and also quickly for you wine lovers, Robert Mondavi
Speaker 1: won Outstanding Wine and Spirits Professional that very first year.
Speaker 4: And Mondavi is now.
Speaker 2: Like, you know, a wine led right, and it's hard
Speaker 2: to stop and imagine. But at the time these were
Speaker 2: all like unknowns in America, you know. And I don't
Speaker 2: think it's coincidence that they're all household names now with
Speaker 2: huge brands and huge, mega money making careers behind them
Speaker 2: because of the James Beard Awards, at least in some
Speaker 2: large part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think restaurants who have been nominated just nominated
Speaker 1: for a Beard Award says that they typically double their
Speaker 1: reservations and they increase their sales by twenty to twenty
Speaker 1: five percent.
Speaker 2: Not all though. I saw an interview with a guy
Speaker 2: named Jason Wilson who had a restaurant called Crush in
Speaker 2: Seattle back in the mid I think the twenty ten
Speaker 2: or eleven he won Best Chef and he said, Nope,
Speaker 2: it did not have that effect people. We talked about
Speaker 2: it more, but it didn't get more people in the restaurant.
Speaker 2: From what I can tell, though, he was an outlier
Speaker 2: in that respect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought you were going to say he won
Speaker 1: in March of twenty twenty and just couldn't understand why
Speaker 1: people weren't backing up.
Speaker 2: Well, he actually did cite the economic downturn is one
Speaker 2: reason why it wasn't happening, and he was talking about
Speaker 2: the from the two thousand and eight meltdown was still going.
Speaker 2: I remember that was that lasted easily until twenty twelve
Speaker 2: or thirteen, and he won in twenty ten, so he
Speaker 2: had just in there griping.
Speaker 1: So we need to talk about the controversies of the
Speaker 1: Beard Awards though, because they've had a few things that
Speaker 1: happened over the years. Any awards ceremony is going to
Speaker 1: have controversies. That's just how it goes. Anytime you have
Speaker 1: a body of people doling out awards that are meaningful
Speaker 1: and economically impactful, it's going to happen, especially.
Speaker 2: When it's a group of almost exclusively white people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that comes up a little later, kind of recently.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand and four, they had a chairman
Speaker 1: named Leonard Pickel I guess senior or junior. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's pronounced pickle p i c k e l.
Speaker 1: And he was convicted of grand larceny I think second
Speaker 1: degree grand larceny for basically stealing about a million dollars
Speaker 1: in cash or you know, expensing things he shouldn't expense
Speaker 1: over a three year period, like those are the foundation's money,
Speaker 1: and they have a lot of you know, scholarships that
Speaker 1: they dole out too, so that's you know, that's a
Speaker 1: big deal if you're stealing from him. He's spent a
Speaker 1: few years in prison.
Speaker 4: The board resigned.
Speaker 1: There were a bunch of journalists who were judges that resigned,
Speaker 1: they came back from that, and then you know, Mario
Speaker 1: Battally comes along, the me Too movement comes along, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, there's people that are saying, like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, a lot of these chefs you're nominating
Speaker 1: and acknowledging are monsters, either literal sexual assault assaulters or
Speaker 1: they're just you know, chefs can be well known for
Speaker 1: being sort of monsters in the kitchen and screaming and
Speaker 1: yelling at people, and you know, they have tempers generally speaking.
Speaker 2: True, but I saw and it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: You can really blame food network producers and other network
Speaker 2: producers who created kitchen based reality shows for perpetuating that
Speaker 2: and making it seem normal and creating that whole generation
Speaker 2: of mean, bullying chefs who would just do that without
Speaker 2: a second thought, thanks to people like Gordon Ramsay doing
Speaker 2: that on TV for year after year after year.
Speaker 4: But they were already doing it in real life.
Speaker 2: Yes, true, but there was there's also always been chefs
Speaker 2: that didn't do that too, and it made it, It
Speaker 2: made it trendy to do that. It just made it
Speaker 2: acceptable for so long that it wasn't until the last
Speaker 2: few years that people really started pushing it back on
Speaker 2: it and said, no, this isn't normal. It's not okay
Speaker 2: for our entire industry to be like this. I shouldn't
Speaker 2: be berated at work every single night. It's not okay.
Speaker 2: And so people finally pushed back on it, and the
Speaker 2: James Beard Awards got caught in the middle of that
Speaker 2: because they've been awarding all these chefs that were really
Speaker 2: troublesome people and mean over the years, all these awards
Speaker 2: award after award after awards, so they were also supporting
Speaker 2: it indirectly, and you can also make a case directly too.
Speaker 2: And so once this was kind of established like this
Speaker 2: is not okay, James Beard Awards, you are the arbiter
Speaker 2: of what is who are good chefs? You got to
Speaker 2: do something about this too, they kind of went back
Speaker 2: and said, Okay, what are we going to do about this?
Speaker 2: We've got to do something because at the very least
Speaker 2: for optics, we can't keep giving these people awards, and
Speaker 2: who knows, maybe they actually do care about the industry
Speaker 2: and the people working in the industry, and in that case,
Speaker 2: they really needed to reconfigure what they were doing and
Speaker 2: reevaluate it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it wasn't just you know, monsters in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: but it was a pattern of like, hey, and this
Speaker 1: is this is just the history of the restaurant industry.
Speaker 1: It's like white men are recognized more, they're more at
Speaker 1: least in the past.
Speaker 2: Just the restaurant industry.
Speaker 4: Though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gotten way way better in the last you know,
Speaker 1: ten or fifteen years. But you know, for most of
Speaker 1: restaurant history, it was like white men were the chefs
Speaker 1: and they were running the show. For the most part.
Speaker 1: There were exceptions. Of course, it's gotten way way better
Speaker 1: now there's much more inclusion. In twenty eighteen, the James
Speaker 1: Beard Foundation said, we need to make some real changes
Speaker 1: to a kind of get these bad apples out of
Speaker 1: the nomination process to begin with, and be more inclusive
Speaker 1: and sort of think outside our own, you know, box
Speaker 1: that we've been in for so long about what makes
Speaker 1: a good chef.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. So they actually they did do that. They
Speaker 2: made a concerted effort and were kind of successful pretty
Speaker 2: much out of the gate, but they became victims of
Speaker 2: their own ambitions in twenty twenty when they canceled the
Speaker 2: James Beard Awards, not just for twenty twenty, but for
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, and they blamed it on the COVID pandemic,
Speaker 2: which made sense, but people were also like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: everybody else has been doing this stuff over zoom, Like,
Speaker 2: why would you cancel the whole awards.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Apparently an insider in the foundation who was also like
Speaker 2: either a Shepherd, journalist or whatever, came and told everybody
Speaker 2: else that's not why they canceled the awards. They canceled
Speaker 2: the awards because every single person who won this year
Speaker 2: in reality is white. So they just didn't give out
Speaker 2: the awards and that caused a huge stir among everybody
Speaker 2: in the industry.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, I mean they covered it up. And
Speaker 1: this was after trying to do the right thing, and
Speaker 1: they canceled, like you said, the next one just because
Speaker 1: they were still sort of reeling from what had happened
Speaker 1: in or they canceled I'm sorry in twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: because they were still reeling from twenty twenty. Finally came
Speaker 1: back last year in twenty twenty two with the first
Speaker 1: awards in I guess three years, and they had a
Speaker 1: total overhaul of the committee and how they judge. They're
Speaker 1: saying that you know, there's an ethics committee now that
Speaker 1: vets nominees just on a personal level, and then also
Speaker 1: said and the way we're judging, like we need to
Speaker 1: think about the criteria in different terms as well moving forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they still don't have it figured out because this
Speaker 2: Ethics committee has gotten has become such watchdogs or guard dogs,
Speaker 2: I should say of James Beard Awards that they hire
Speaker 2: private investigators to investigate the nominees. Part of the nomination
Speaker 2: process now is being grill over zoom or probably in
Speaker 2: person now by private investigators working on behalf of the
Speaker 2: James Beard Ethics Committee, and that soured people in and
Speaker 2: of itself. So they've just they're like a pendulum that
Speaker 2: somehow misses the middle every time. It just keeps going
Speaker 2: from once I do another and I think they're on
Speaker 2: the right track. And somebody gave them credit. They said
Speaker 2: one chef said that we're seeing. What we're seeing is
Speaker 2: quote an institution self correct in real time, which is
Speaker 2: you know, that's fair, and maybe they should take off
Speaker 2: another couple of years until they get it figured out.
Speaker 2: But they're trying at least, and they have been successful
Speaker 2: some years, but they just there's just been misstep after
Speaker 2: misstep as they try to figure this out. It's a
Speaker 2: big systemic issue, and they're kind of like the vanguard
Speaker 2: of the whole thing, so people are looking to them
Speaker 2: more than other places too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were two incidences this past year in particular
Speaker 1: that made the news. One was that a finalist for
Speaker 1: Best Chef in the South, an Alabama chef named Timothy Hansis,
Speaker 1: was disqualified a month before the awards because they were like,
Speaker 1: he's one of these guys that breaks his staff, even
Speaker 1: yells at customers. He denied this stuff, said, well, it
Speaker 1: sounded like he was like, hey, listen, I'm a passionate guy.
Speaker 1: But this stuff is not how it's being characterized. But
Speaker 1: one of the real problems is they didn't communicate that
Speaker 1: to the committee members that they had disqualified it, like
Speaker 1: they found out about it in the press and a
Speaker 1: lot of other chefs and judges, because I think there's
Speaker 1: like six hundred ultimate judges, the chefs and food writers
Speaker 1: and journalists all over the country. A few of those quit,
Speaker 1: one called it fake virtue signaling, one smashed his previous award,
Speaker 1: another step down in protest. And then this Kentucky chef
Speaker 1: named Sam before was a finalist for Best Chef South East,
Speaker 1: and she said that she was questioned, like given basically
Speaker 1: no notice, questioned over zoomed by these investigators over social
Speaker 1: media posts where she had spoken out against domestic violence
Speaker 1: and sexual assault. And the way this goes the way
Speaker 1: this happens is anonymous tipster's calling in, so you can
Speaker 1: call in and anonymously say anything you want about someone,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you're being investigated without any
Speaker 1: like prior, you know, warning of what is even going on.
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, she's on this zoom and
Speaker 1: they're saying that she was it was targeted harassment and
Speaker 1: bullying because of some tweets that she sent out sort
Speaker 1: of exposing stories of sexual assault, but she never named anybody.
Speaker 1: And she told the people, She's like, how can you
Speaker 1: accuse me of targeted harassment if after an hour you
Speaker 1: still don't know who I'm targeting, Like I didn't name anybody.
Speaker 1: And she was, you know, obviously really upset about this,
Speaker 1: and it just seems like there's too much secrecy around
Speaker 1: how it goes down. These investigations. They don't have a
Speaker 1: real true like day in court for the accused. It's
Speaker 1: just that they're kind of just almost surprised.
Speaker 4: It seems like, and.
Speaker 1: You know, before you know it, then they're not in
Speaker 1: consideration and they're like, well, wait a minute, I didn't
Speaker 1: even get a chance to plead.
Speaker 4: My case in full.
Speaker 2: It sounds kafka esque.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Bourdain has always been very critical.
Speaker 4: He was. He had a lot of bad stuff to
Speaker 4: say about the Beard Words over the years.
Speaker 1: I'm sure, funny stuff, a lot of it about not
Speaker 1: being inclusive and like, who do you think you're kidding
Speaker 1: by saying you're now inclusive? Stuff like that, and it's
Speaker 1: just like he wasn't an award guys. He's kind of
Speaker 1: like the people who bashed the oscars and just like
Speaker 1: just a bunch of industry people, you know self, you know,
Speaker 1: patting each other on the back.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'll always remember a tweet from him at like right
Speaker 2: when Baby Driver came out and everybody was crazy for it.
Speaker 2: All it said was fab driver, but he didn't say
Speaker 2: f and it was just three words that completely undermined
Speaker 2: everybody else.
Speaker 4: It was really kind of masterful ordine. Love that guy.
Speaker 2: So yeah, one thing though, Chuck, just to wrap this
Speaker 2: all up to me, James Beard is still such an
Speaker 2: endigma and confusing. I have no idea what he would
Speaker 2: make of this this award scandal stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, none of the awards came about until
Speaker 1: he was gone, so he might be like, I don't
Speaker 1: even like the idea of these awards.
Speaker 2: Who who knows not?
Speaker 4: Or maybe he would, Yeah, we don't know.
Speaker 2: If you want to know anything more about James Beard,
Speaker 2: there's a lot out there. You can also start with
Speaker 2: his cookbooks too, which are allegedly quite good. Chuck's gonna
Speaker 2: let all of us know about his onion sandwiches.
Speaker 4: I'm going to do it.
Speaker 2: Since Chucks that I'm going to do it, we've just
Speaker 2: triggered listener mail.
Speaker 1: Oh, by the way, that onion should be a sweet
Speaker 1: white onion, So a idelia.
Speaker 4: Is a great choice.
Speaker 2: Only a sweet yellow onion.
Speaker 1: It is yellow, but maybe the sweet overrides the color.
Speaker 1: What you don't want is a red out again.
Speaker 2: Okay, I could see that. That's a that's a real
Speaker 2: harsh yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I'm gonna call this reality. We did
Speaker 1: that episode is reality real and got a lot.
Speaker 4: Of great feedback on it.
Speaker 1: People seem to enjoy kind of breaking their brains momentarily, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: just listen to that episode. Thumbs up for daring to
Speaker 1: tackle such a subject that one could get really in
Speaker 1: the weeds about. For example, one could argue that each
Speaker 1: other is humans, reality is different from one another. The
Speaker 1: whole idea of perception is reality, and everyone's perception is
Speaker 1: different than one. Mask must ask what the definition of
Speaker 1: reality is? I kind of talked about that a little
Speaker 1: bit to okay, anyhow, all that aside, one question I
Speaker 1: was never able to understand why it's even a question.
Speaker 1: Is if a tree falls in the woods and no
Speaker 1: one's around to hear it doesn't make a sound. Doesn't
Speaker 1: science tell us that sound is caused by friction and vibration.
Speaker 1: That tree would have to pull off one heck of
Speaker 1: a trick to fall without causing any kind of friction
Speaker 1: and vibration. And furthermore, what makes us so important that
Speaker 1: a tree would put on a friction and vibration show
Speaker 1: only when we're present? Am I missing something here with
Speaker 1: this tree sound issue? I've just never understood why that's
Speaker 1: a question, at least because we are in the presence
Speaker 1: and know about science. But then again, science also can't
Speaker 1: seem to talk some out of the flat earth theory either,
Speaker 1: which is reality for some love the pod. Keep up
Speaker 1: the great work, and that is Corey and Omaha, Nebraska.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Corey. I guess to kind of answer
Speaker 2: that a little bit as best I can. I can't
Speaker 2: even this has been too my brain's broken. Let me
Speaker 2: just stop for well.
Speaker 4: I think you kind of answered it in that episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess we do. Yeah. It's funny
Speaker 2: that Corey brings us up because there's something that hit
Speaker 2: me the other day too. Like when we did the
Speaker 2: reality episode, I totally understood everything that we were saying.
Speaker 4: It all made sense to me.
Speaker 2: And then an airplane flew overhead, and I wondered why
Speaker 2: I was witnessing hearing an airplane fly overhead that I
Speaker 2: was not expecting. That has nothing to do with my
Speaker 2: life other than the fact that I can hear it
Speaker 2: and it's flying overhead. Why would that exist? I don't know.
Speaker 2: The best thing I can come up with is that
Speaker 2: it exists for those other people, and they just happen
Speaker 2: to be passing by the space that I'm occupying at
Speaker 2: the time, and I'm within earshot, so it happens for me.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I can't can't quite connect those dots.
Speaker 2: So I kind of get what Corey's saying there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I get it too. I I don't like to
Speaker 4: think about this stuff.
Speaker 2: I love it. I'll think about it for both of us.
Speaker 2: Oh great, Well, if you want to get in touch
Speaker 2: with this like Corey did and break our brains a
Speaker 2: little further, we love to hear from you. You can
Speaker 2: send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2: H