Anthony Bourdain On Whole Foods – And News

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From a Salon.com article, (you can read it here) Anthony Bourdain talking about Whole Foods. Interesting interview.

I love Whole Foods talking about lobster and clam cruelty, when people are being fucked to death, kidnapped, starved, bombed. [The grocery chain recently stopped selling some live shellfish on the grounds that the practice is inhumane.] There is so much cruelty to humans — so much cruelty to animals — in this world. And people are worried about a fucking mollusk. Unbelievable.

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I’ve heard from several sources over the past month, that the owners of Tabla will be opening a restaurant in the last vacant space at the Henry building, right behind Powells. Hard to beat that location, next to the almost finished Armory, in the middle of downtown, and plenty of underground parking at low rates. Can’t imagine what they are paying for rent!

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On June 30th, Rachel Ray’s visit to Portland will be broadcast on The Food Channel. To be honest, I can’t stand Rachel, but I’m going to set my Tivo to record it, just to see the last few days of Ripe before they closed. You can see it on, (brace yourself) Rachel Ray’s Tasty Travels, 9:30pm, Friday June 30. It will repeat 7/1 @12:30am. I can hardly contain my excitement.

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The New York Times restaurant critic, Frank Bruni picks up on our earlier discussion of the decision by Whole Foods Markets not to carry live crab or lobster. He asks whether there is much difference between the killing of a lobster, or the force feeding of a goose for foie gras and the slow suffocation of a fish. From the article:

“When you think about treating animals in a humane way, it’s unlimited. If you start with the lobster, then next month you should think about the clam, and then you have to think about the fish, which is suffocating outside the water after we catch it.”

Even before it suffocates, a hooked or netted fish flails in a doomed effort to avoid its fate. The process is traumatic enough that David Pasternack, a fisherman and co-owner of the Manhattan seafood restaurant Esca, noted that “you can see the struggle in the flesh of a fish.”

If the fish hasn’t gone down quickly, he said, “The meat feels and looks stressed out.” Does that struggle deserve as much heed as the grisly realities of the abattoir?

It is an interesting article, and points out issues I have struggled with myself. You can read it by clicking here.

At 141 votes, the poll on Whole Foods new policy is pretty much a dead heat: 45% saying they are less likely to shop at WF, 43% saying it won’t make a difference. The trend hasn’t really changed much since the beginning, so we’ll cut it short and move on to a slightly different type of question: Have you personally ever killed and eaten an animal? I’m thinking something larger than a fish here. I think of us prefer our meat to come in nice little sanitary packages from the grocery store. I have friends that won’t eat anything that is served with the bone still on.