Anthony Bourdain Pens Ode To Mexican Food, Workers On Cinco De Mayo

Anthony Bourdain is always following his nose to kitchens in unfamiliar climes, and like on any trip to a truly foreign place, his narration usually come out part jubilant and part harrumphing. Two days before Cinco de Mayo, on the eve of the debut of a new episode of “Parts Unknown,” the swashbuckling host issued a classic harrumph in the form of an ode to (real) Mexican food -- and Mexican people. “As much as we think we know and love it, we have barely scratched the surface of what Mexican food really is,” he wrote in a Tumblr post this weekend. “It is NOT melted cheese over a tortilla chip. It is not simple, or easy. It is not simply ‘bro food’ halftime. It is in fact, old -- older even than the great cuisines of Europe and often deeply complex, refined, subtle, and sophisticated.”

The new episode of his show, which aired on Sunday night, saw the swashbuckling former chef mixing it up with two Zapotecan sisters in Oaxaca, before backtracking to Mexico City, and in his post he extolled the intricate labors of Oaxacan cuisine. “A true mole sauce,” he wrote, “can take DAYS to make, a balance of freshly (always fresh) ingredients, painstakingly prepared by hand. It could be, should be, one of the most exciting cuisines on the planet. If we paid attention. The old school cooks of Oaxaca make some of the more difficult to make and nuanced sauces in gastronomy.”

Bourdain sounded equally put out by what he called “our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration." He continued, “As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy -- the restaurant business as we know it -- in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers.” As for those who would claim that Mexican workers take jobs to be otherwise occupied by Americans, he added that “in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position -- or even a job as prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, provably, simply won’t do.”