March 3rd - Duke Food Working Group Session

“Kitchen Kinship: How Chefs Transform Cultural Anthropological Notions of Vital Relations”

Speaker: Kelly Alexander, Food Writer, Cultural Anthropology PhD

Tuesday, March 3rd @ 4pm-5pm

Location: McKinley Seminar Room, Fuqua School of Business

*Disclaimer: These Meeting Minutes are recorded by a volunteer and may not accurately reflect all viewpoints shared at the meeting.

Meeting Minutes:

[Notes from Talk]

Kelly’s work has been marrying her interest in food and writing with cultural anthropology.

Evolution of chefs – they are the new rock stars (internet and media has enabled this phenomenon to grow). There have been some stories written about this. One posits this is because:

  • Chefs are creative and their medium is accessible
  • They are agile and create “sexy” “edgy” work
  • They have a personality mix that is very bold (often arrogant)

Kelly didn’t totally agree with this, and also wanted to see if this perception of chefs as “celebrities” or “rock stars” was affecting our eating habits.

We are putting more time into choosing a restaurant now….we are spending a lot of time eating restaurants!

If we examine traditional kinship diagrams from cultural anthropology, if the man is missing, something else has to take over.

What separates anthropology from other systems of study, is that anthropologists live in the society they are studying, and then come back and report on it/assess it.

Kinship: blood lines (descendent) – in most cultures, you only go outside your bloodline to establish new “kinship” via for marriage (naturally most cultures feel they need to go outside the direct bloodline). The main things they step out of their bloodlines for are marriage… but also food.

When we share food with another group, we become kin with those we share it with (wine or food) – this was the first look at food from a cultural anthropology approach.

New theory from an anthropologist: Who you eat with on a regular basis, you become more like them.

Back to celebrity chefs:

Chanterelle restaurant – hosted staff meals; their restaurant staff became more like family than the actual owner felt towards his family

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Anthony Bourdain

  • “Funny thing is that most people high-up in the food world have at least one parent who is French”

Prune

  • Best-selling food memoir of all-time from the chef founder: Blood, Bones, and Butter
  • Lost her family through divorce when she was young – lost her feeling of unity; found family again via her life as a chef with her kitchen staff

Kelly: I’m not saying you need to have a dysfunctional family to want to work in a kitchen, but the kitchen does become a home for many of those people.

[Discussion]

Jonathan Bloom, Author of Wasteland: Q: Restaurant crew as family – have you seen folks in kitchen having “family meals” for staff?

Kelly: Yes, this seems to happen at more high-end places. But this is pretty variable among restaurants. The smaller the restaurant, the more likely they are to have “family-style meals”

Q: Is “Cook Like Jamie Oliver at Home” a new phenom?

Kelly: yes, because it is showing folks how to “dumb down” this food - folks feel like they can’t cook the fully elaborate meals chefs cook in their restaurants

Erin Branch, Writing Instructor at WakeForest: Q: How do we become part of the phenomenon that is now the celebrity chef movement?

Kelly: we try to become a part of this when we hear about it and read about it, and seek out restuarants [earlier in talk Kelly mentioned that people spend an average of 2 hours finding a restaurant for a special occasion]

Jared Ginn, Global Health Student: Q: can you talk about the future trends you see for this celebrity chef trend?

Kelly: a lot of students in my food class ask me about meeting Martha Stewart, for example. I think that getting people to pay more attention to their food and eating is a good thing. Branding and design and the celebrity element is maybe not the most positive thing, but again, refocusing people on the importance of food is very important. Some folks are wasting their platforms by selling chicken wings in Time Square, rather than advocating for adding calories to the menu.

Gavan Fitzsimons, Fuqua: although, the meta-analyses do show that seeing the nutrition labels are not affecting consumption; some teenage boys are actually ramping up. But what has been maybe more effect are signs telling how many hours you have to walk to burn off those calories.

Christine Tenekjian, Duke Diet and Fitness Center: my clients do find the calorie info helpful, but they are watching their weight. But we have to help people understand what that calorie info means for them…the “burning it off” info would have to be adjusted for different people. But even some comparisons could be helpful for people.

Kelly: knowledge is not always power. What will change that behavior is always the sticky point.

Christine: restaurants do have to be compliant with the nutrition posting by the end of the year – looking forward to more studies on effectiveness out of that.

Christine Q: we are trying to get folks to spend more time cooking and eating at home…do you see this happening?

Kelly: I’ve spent some time with contestants on Top Chef…they have some minor celebrity. On the social level, this kind of show helps bring people together to try to cook things at home. The good side is that you can serve as a teacher for the populace. Chefs do often need help writing books, however ;). There is also a big expectation now chefs if you want to really “make” it: need to develop their brands and have multiple lines of business. Most chefs can feed 200 but not 8, so that part of the family education for the public at home they are sometimes not able to provide.

Linda Daniel, Duke Librarian – felt like she developed a family from her time in China setting up the Duke campus there, because of having a happy hour together. Felt that that made them a group/family.

Gavan Fitzsimons, Fuqua, FWG: Development of the celebrity chef has followed the development of brands in general in our society. Brands often help simplify our lives. When Gavan was young, when his parents went out, it was to the local restaurant in their area. Now, Gavan has a ton of options. Now, the celebrity chef becomes a simplifying option (ex: Steven Starr restaurants each have a simple theme). Perhaps for brands like Proctor and Gamble, they are also offering customers a simple option.

Kelly: Media-friendliness of the chefs also helps them to build their brand. David Boule is one of those that lost some opportunity because of this lack of communication.

Gavan: part of kinship, he feels part of the Boule family bc he ate at his restaurant, and bc that guy stayed local. Like a micro-brand for some people.

John Virdin, Director of Ocean Policy Program at Nic Institute: very interested in looking at how to influence demand for sustainable seafood. Have you seen instances of celebrity chefs getting behind a cause and actually changing demand?

Kelly: I wish that that was the most important factor in consumer decision! I wish there were more chefs that did that. Tom Coleccio does this….many chefs have a problem with selling the sustainable seafood – some people’s careers are all centered on just editing menu names. Ex: putting the word “Crispy” in front of something will sell more. To sell more it has to be “sexy”.

Collaborations:

  • Kelly Alexander: any ways to look at social behavior and what is driving things, then Kelly wants that kind of collaboration
  • BECR: looking for anyone interested in doing work around behavioral studies to get people to eat healthier! Will have a meeting tomorrow. $3 million in funding.