Omnivore - The Bourdain-Deen feud continues

Paula Deen is my least favorite celebrity chef. It’s not her unhealthy cooking that bothers me most. It’s her obviously calculated demeanor as a histrionic Southern woman that makes me grind my teeth. No, she really is not down-to-earth and just-plain folks. She’s a cartoon laughing all the way to the bank.

In case you haven’t heard:

Anthony Bourdain hates everything about her. Although his persona as a bad boy is just as calculated as Paula’s, he tore her to pieces in a recent TV Guide interview. Inhale the hatred:

The worst, most dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen. She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations and she’s proud of the fact that her food is f—-ing bad for you. If I were on at seven at night and loved by millions of people at every age, I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it’s OK to eat food that is killing us. Plus, her food sucks.

Ouch. Then Paula responded via an article in the New York Post. She also showed up on Fox for an interview:

Bourdain did end up tempering his comment about Deen by tweeting: “Resolved: Next time I’m asked (for the millionth time) who the worst cooks on Food Network are, I’ll just shut up. Who cares?”

Now, Frank Bruni, former New York Times dining critic turned editorial columnist, has weighed in. He views the Bourdain-Deen bitch fight as indicative of the “culinary elitism” that runs rampant in America these days:

There’s some class-inflected hypocrisy in the food world, where the center seems to be ceding territory to two wings: the self-appointed sophisticates and the supposed rubes. And the latter — represented by Deen and other objects of Bourdain’s ire, including Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee — have come on strong over the last few years

Give the column a full read.