Leather Storrs: James Beard Awards and the Changing Culinary Industry

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Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Leather Storrs, GoLocalPDX Contributor

A stretchy culinary paraphrase of Einstein’s seminal anti-war bumper sticker goes like this: You cannot simultaneously bitch about and benefit from chef adulation. See, it’s award season for us and that’s when opinions and snark start flying. The James Beard finalists are picking their finery and preparing their speeches for the May fourth ceremony that will crown chefs, restaurants, writers and restaurateurs the best of 2015. 

In addition to being inherently subjective, the Beard awards maintain a level of secrecy and politics that make the decisions of the foundation ripe for criticism. Did you cook at the Beard house (an honor which requires a chef to fly herself, her food and her team to New York on her own dime)? Do you have a publicist who put you in front of the committee or did you “earn” your nomination? And of course, “Why not ME?”

On top of this back biting is the notion that a select few (most notably the goateed and frosted Guy Fieri) are destroying the credibility of our profession. The old school pines for the time when cooks paid their “dues,” getting hazed and abused until they could rise from the muck and pay the abuse forward. The new school, they argue, is full of celebrity hungry short timers who bought their training. Back in the day, cooks would work eighteen hour days and get paid for eight in an environment thick with machismo and harassment. The attention and interest our industry garners has modernized and humanized working conditions. 

Still, luminaries in our field criticize the dumbing down of our profession; the side show that is food TV. Even Jacques Pepin, one of the kindest members of the old guard, has weighed in on the demise of the professional Chef because of culinary television. But Pepin would do well to remember that it was not his groundbreaking work on Sous Vide cooking for Howard Johnson’s in the sixties that made people care about his opinion. It was his TV time with Julia Child that made us fall in love with the suave, mischievous Frenchman.

And it is food television that attracts a variety of people to our industry. Scientists and scholars and high achievers of many stripes are compelled to pursue a career that might have eluded them were it not for some chef on television who made or said something that sparked their fire. And while many of us wince at the deep fried cheesiness that is Guy Fieri, we must admit that he has expanded the talent pool.

The explosion of our profession has caught us all by surprise. And I straddle the line between new and old school: I complain about the commitment and focus of new cooks as I write about food, host a weekly radio show and hope for my big break.

Food is big business and the money and attention has improved the quality of chefs, the quality of food and the quality of life for cooks. Look, we are craftsmen first and artists second. We are blue collar. We suffer long and hot hours for little pay. But we are the only craftsmen for whom there is a collection of honors and awards that compel international attention. And we are the only craftsmen with our own television network. Keep that in mind as you complain about the current crop of snot-nosed culinary students, while in shorts, on the sand, at the Pebble Beach Food and Wine festival.

Leather Storrs is an Oregon native who has served 20 years in professional kitchens. He owns a piece of two area restaurants: Noble Rot and Nobleoni at Oregon College of Art and Craft, where he yells and waves arms. He quietly admits to having been a newspaper critic in Austin, Texas and Portland. 

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