A Bluesky comment

Thomas Keller showed up to a community meeting in his chefs jacket to complain about affordable housing being built near his 3 Michelin star restaurant.

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r/KitchenConfidential thread

[ Removed by moderator ]

It was nuked without explanation. Here’s a comment that I edited to be smaller paragraphs. Still tl;dr? See emphasis mine.

This is what it looks like when a town and its most famous son stare straight at the same moral bill and both start quietly looking for the check exit. On one side you have Yountville the civic suit that spent years talking a big game about workforce housing taxed its tourists bought the dead school did the studies built the slide decks and still managed to turn a lifeline into a maze of process and delay.

On the other you have Keller gliding in late to the party with that perfectly measured concern voice saying he supports housing supports the workers supports the concept while methodically pulling every thread that might actually get those workers a key to something within walking distance.

The town hides behind procedure impact reports and phasing charts Keller hides behind vibes unit mix and financial prudence but the effect is the same bodies in aprons and uniforms burning their lives on the highway so everyone else can pretend this is still a quaint little wine town and not a resort wrapped around a labor camp.

The contrast is mostly cosmetic. The council does it in public meetings and staff reports talking about design character traffic circulation and fiscal responsibility while quietly shaving off ambition turning three stories into a favor two phases into maybe someday and urgency into another workshop on community feedback.

Keller does it with brand management and soft focus language about protecting quality of life and making sure housing is done right using his platform to put a governor on the one serious project that might actually change who gets to exist inside the town limits after dark. The town is cowardly in that familiar bureaucratic way never quite willing to say out loud that housing workers near where they work is more important than preserving a postcard skyline and under parked tasting rooms.

Keller is cowardly in the more personal way of a man who built an empire on other peoples double shifts but still cannot bring himself to accept a little density a few cramped studios and some uncomfortable neighbors as the cost of doing business honestly. Side by side they make a neat little duet.

City hall says our hands are tied by state mandates financial risk and community input Keller says my hands are tied by unit size parking and concerns for the town’s future both pretending they are reluctant participants in someone else’s bad plan instead of co authors of the same old script.

The council needs his star power to bless the illusion that you can fix a housing crisis without pissing off anyone with money and he needs their endless process to make sure nothing truly disruptive actually gets built in his shadow. The punch line is that neither of them ever has to say what they are really choosing because the workers feel it for them in overtime miles flat tires and rent checks mailed to someone else’s community.

In the end the only real difference between the chef and the chief and the council is the wardrobe they wear while they all quietly decide that the people who make the fantasy possible still do not deserve a place inside it.

    • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      15·
      16 days ago

      Alice Waters

      Many years ago - when I was still a liberal - I remember reading a NYT puff piece about her and her promotion of slow food. By design puff pieces are bullshit but it worked its magic on me. She seemed like a good person.

      Serious question - why is she and others bad? I checked her Wikipedia page but it reads like it was written entirely by her PR firm. An example…

      In celebration of the restaurant’s 25th anniversary in 1996, Waters founded the Chez Panisse Foundation, whose mission is to transform public education by using food to teach, nurture, and empower young people. In particular, the foundation has worked with the Berkeley Unified School District to develop a public school curriculum that is integrated with the school dining services and incorporates growing, cooking, and sharing food at the table into the school day in order to build a humane and sustainable future for the school’s students.

    • Chana [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      13·
      16 days ago

      You can always tell who is a bullshit chef based on whether they equate “difficult for poor people to do” with “good”. Those types are just ruling class sycophants reproducing the illusion of exclusivity over good food.

      In Europe, they used to be the people who overspiced everything because spices were expensive. So decadent to put a quarter pound of black pepper on that chicken. After spices became inexpensive and common folk used them whenever they pleased, suddenly it was all about “pure” foods that required careful preparation, preparation a working stiff couldn’t do or pay. Having a gel blob that tastes a lot like a pear was never that great but it sure was pricey. Look at me over here, eating a very good pear like a loser.

      • Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        6·
        16 days ago

        This is a response to both you and @InevitableSwing, because I don’t want to type it twice:

        Keller, Waters, and gang are all the type of rich people so far up their own asses they think they created something new, unique, and innovative in the form of “farm-to-table” and “California cuisine” restaurants. Which is to say: you buy local food, and cook it. Unlike other restaurants, who also buy from local businesses, but don’t go through the crucial step of jerking themselves off for being so refined. And the food isn’t on a menu—it’s an experience, a tasting, or a choice selection. The dishes have names like “Elysian Dreams” or “Winter’s Dark” or some bullshit. What’s served changes based on the chef’s vibes.

        This is worth $150 to $400 a plate, plus an extra $100 per glass of wine. And some shaved black truffle is always only an extra $150 away!

        Fuck them and their pompous bullshit.

        • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          3·
          16 days ago

          TBF I get the concept of a tasting course, the chef designs a set of specific courses to be eaten concurrently, not “mix and match appetizer/main/dessert.” But yeah, the pretentiousness and exorbitant prices are douchey.

    • Krem [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      9·
      16 days ago

      I purchased some download links for pirated “masterclass” videos on Taobao once, and it came with a series by Thomas Keller. I didn’t get past the first mini-episode. Feels like the guy had no idea what he was talking about. He was trying to explain seasoning, which is only salt and acid (??) and explain the concept of “local”, by going “which is more local, the vegetable grown locally or the traditional food imported from another country? it’s not an easy question”. mumbling weirdo. people let this guy run kitchens?

      • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        16 days ago

        Mind you, executive chefs (especially at your super high end restaurants) are mostly doing menu planning, management, promotion activities, etc. They typically aren’t involved with the day-to-day operations, occasionally come down to ask some questions, get a general overview, but not joining the trenches with the line chefs. And Keller’s been executive chef at the French Laundry for a few decades at this point. So not surprising that he’s not that good at explaining hands on cooking for the home chef these days.

  • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    21·
    16 days ago

    The town is cowardly in that familiar bureaucratic way never quite willing to say out loud that housing workers near where they work is more important than preserving a postcard skyline and under parked tasting rooms.

    Would it be that hard to build some affordable housing in a pseudo-European mid-density style?

    • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      16·
      16 days ago

      The GOP loves the maximalism that is built-into American society. And nobody is more maximalist than Trump. Fuck the poor. Fuck people who can’t afford rent.

      Liberals pretend maximalism isn’t everywhere and they pretend they aren’t that way either but - of course - they often are. Housing shows the difference between what a liberal says: “I’m a Yimby!” With what they actually usually are: “I’m a Nimby!”

  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    16·
    16 days ago

    In the end the only real difference between the chef and the chief and the council is the wardrobe they wear while they all quietly decide that the people who make the fantasy possible still do not deserve a place inside it.

    mfw the theory achieves supercriticality
    nuke no notes.

    i used to be a farm worker at a resort community. baby bite-sized greens harvested just an hour before the lords for their post golf lunch. and as a person who likes food but abhors the conspicuous consumption aspect, the snobbery, “rich people subsidizing food for other rich people” projects, and the aristocrat-for-an-hour mummery of so-called “fine dining”, the number of celebrity chefs i wouldn’t deck on pure principal is very small.

    to those out there that want to break free from the classist systems of the west and their approach to luxury food that has absolutely infected everything, i recommend the only-recently-well-translated (2018) alternative to the westoid Marie-Larousse (1938) / Auguste Escoffier (1903) / Marie-Antoine Carême (1815) lineage of haute-cuisine gastronome bullshit:

    “Recipes from the Garden of Contentment” (1792) by Yuan Mei, a true enjoyer of simple meals of harmonious flavors made with limited ingredients and less waste/pomp/bullshit, in general. he was an extremely opinionated mid-tier civil servant who retired early to focus on writing poems, and having the most bomb ass food and parties from his large kitchen garden/pond out in the country. he regarded the elaborate/opulent meals and banquets among elites of his time to be worthy only of scorn. what mattered was what flavors compliment each other and what could be prepared without a lot of faffery and waste.

    it is a completely different philosophy of food to the western classist bullshit where the profession of the modern chef emerged from the estate kitchen of landed aristocrats to set up the “restaurant” where the new petite bourgeoisie could play at being a little lord for a meal and be waited on by servants and brought the finest treats.

    the forward of the recent translation, the translator notes, the bio (a free excerpt of these is here) and especially his unfiltered opinions at the start of his chapters on topics are all deeply entertaining and i think they are more important in terms of philosophical inspiration than the recipes themselves.

    a bonus is, none of these absolute fucking westoid chef clowns have ever heard of this guy, because they have a total blindspot for everything that isn’t eurocentric. so if you claim him as the great ancestor of food artistry, they will be at a total loss because their dogma is narrow as hell.

    it should be noted, the far east had a whole sophisticated civilization back when europeans were still living in caves, hooting gibberish and throwing half-eaten turds at the sun because it hurt to look at.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    16·
    16 days ago

    A comment I assume was copy-and-pasted so I edited it to create a list.

    Key Reasons to Keep Chef Uniforms in the Kitchen:

    • Hygiene and Contamination (Cross-Contamination): Chef jackets are designed to be clean and sanitary for food preparation. Wearing them in public—public transport, smoking areas, restrooms, or grocery stores—exposes them to external, harmful pathogens that can contaminate food, causing potential food poisoning.

    • Professionalism: The uniform is a symbol of food safety, cleanliness, and professionalism. Wearing it outside can look unprofessional and cause customers to question the sanitation of the establishment.

    • Safety Hazards: The jacket is intended to protect you from hot liquids, steam, and fire while cooking. Wearing it outside makes it a target for, or source of, contamination that you would not want in a kitchen.

    • Regulatory Standards: In many professional environments, wearing the uniform off-premise is prohibited due to food safety regulations, as it violates basic food hygiene practices.

  • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    16 days ago

    Wearing a chef’s jacket outside of work/commute

    Ok, admittedly I have done this but it was a part of a Halloween costume. But not to a townhall meeting to argue as a pro homelessness dickhead.

  • Commiechameleon [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    6·
    16 days ago

    More and more I have the urge to organize and militarize the homeless to march them from the west coast to d.c. to demand actionable change. D.w. It’ll be as peaceful as the state monopoly of violence allows.

    My other less fed post idea would be to organize sit ins at bougie restaurants, around schools, around the various circuses (stadiums, yacht clubs, etc), luxury apartments. Just to really give insight of the whole homelessness epidemic and make it known and to hurt the monied interests. But the real trick is to get them organized enough to have them move as a swarm of locusts to cause enough disruption without getting them locked up for the crime of checks notes being poor.