In the Heartland.
I love the show No Reservations. Anthony Bourdain is snarky, but he’s allowed to be. He worked his way up through the restaurant industry, wrote a great book, and has become a worldwide phenomenon because of it. His entire aesthetic is based around the idea that he will find the best food anywhere, whether it is off the streets of India or fresh from the arctic waters in Northern Quebec.
I suppose with this in mind, I found tonight’s episode a bit disheartening. Traveling through the country, the show featured five cities that each could have easily been the focus of an entire show, rather than an 8 minute segment. It seemed the whole point was to prove that good food exists outside of New York and California. It left me wondering what exactly the point of the past 10 seasons had been.
I remember when I was briefly in Rome, most of my friends were not American. When asked where I was from, I always answered with Ohio, rather than a nearby big city. One girl from Paris asked me about the living situation in New York City. “I was told some people don’t even have ovens to cook”, she said. I could only answer with an, “I was told that as well.” Having never had to experience living in an apartment without an oven, an apartment I pay exponentially less for, I can only imagine how awful that must be.
I will not eschew the midwestern love of various mayonnaise-based salads, but I have no problem disputing the “Applebee’s land” claim made in tonight’s episode. Most likely, there are more Applebee’s locations in the state of California than in the entire Midwest. Yes, there are more people in California, but that only allows one point. For every reputable establishment, there are probably five Olive Gardens. People love those breadsticks, damnit, and it doesn’t matter if you’re in the suburbs of Milwaukee or the middle of Manhattan.
Perhaps good food is readily available on every corner in the streets of New York. That doesn’t mean that McDonald’s is not the most profitable restaurant in the area, though. It should come as no surprise to the man who has been everywhere that this sentiment holds true across the country, even if it is on a much smaller scale. That’s why it’s entirely unnecessary to deign us with your presence as a proof that people outside of those cities subsist on food other than Big Macs.
Come back to Columbus, Anthony Bourdain, and I will show you the real food of the people. You can go to Osaka for sushi, but it is nearly blasphemous to tease us with images of cows and farmland, only to present an episode of foodie-approved dishes one can find anywhere else. No, until you’ve had Amish country bacon cheese, you have not been to the Midwest. That is a true food of the heartland.
