Telly talking

I was watching two food shows on television last night and couldn’t help remarking on the contrast between them. There was a locally made effort, with the well-rounded Kunal Vijaykar as the host, noshing on paella and a spinach concoction that he gingerly and very reluctantly forked up. And then there was my favourite foodie, Anthony Bourdain, who did a very uncharacteristic and un-food show, eating but not very much, telling of a trauma that only someone who had been there could have spoken about. while neither was brilliant television, both were remarkable, in opposite directions of opinion…and good taste!

Vijaykar was sniffing around Spanish food with the chef of a well known Mumbai hotel. If I had been the chef, frankly, I would have refused to have him in my kitchen or at my table. He seemed completely inept at talking about the food, totally clueless where the recipe was concerned and amazingly awkward when eating it had to happen. He does that often, making a wonderfully foolish spectacle of himself as he bumbles and blunders through wherever he is and whatever he is eating. It happened in Chettinad, it happened in a tea estate, it happened again this episode. As he watched the paella being made, he remarked less than sensibly about how the seafood was going in, how the rice swelled up and how the dish bubbled (well, maybe not that, but that was the general level of comment). And when he ate it, first sampling the spinach with surprisingly ham-handed stabs of a fork, he did not have the finesse or the spirit of adventure that would make it al seem like great fun! His bites of the paella – with a spoon, no less, assisted with a fork – were tentative and his ensuing remarks moronic, to say the least. And his most serendipitous moment was perhaps when he showed astonishment at the way in which the taste of the seafood had infused into the rice. And the naivete was not spiced by enough charm to make it even semi-appealing.

Sigh. I read the funnies in the papers that we get every day. They were more absorbing.

Later last night I sat through a re-run of No Reservations. It is perhaps one of my favourite shows, where Bourdain travels to wherever and eats whatever in whichever dive he can find, occasionally going for the experience that mandates actually sitting down at a table…’whatever’ being the operative term! I have watched him scarfing down animal innards in China, messing with tacos of various descriptions in Mexico and carefully picking up food with his fingers in India. But yesterday’s episode was very moving and ‘different’. The crew was in Beirut, when the airport was bombed after Lebanese soldiers were kidnapped. And there was chaos, uncertainty and, of course, fear. No one knew when they would get out, no one knew even if they would get out. And Bourdain spoke about not just the situation, but also the insecurity that he and his friends and colleagues were feeling at the time. There was reality television happening, very little food, except at the start and when they got together to muster up a meal or two, and it moved me more than any news report or National Geographic story could. It was all there, all real, all graphic, and all frightening. Which elevated it beyond the usual genre of food shows on television, where someone eats something, cooks something and talks about something with a happy face and a very happy tummy attached.

Compare the two. And you will see who wins. And you will, I am sure, agree with me.