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Top Chefs Vow to Save The World in Manifesto

  • Spence Cooper
  • September 14, 2011

Giles Tremlett, reporting for the Guardian notes top chefs have devised a plan to save the planet with an open letter to the next generation of cooks, signed by such luminaries as Ferran Adriá of Spain’s recently closed El Bulli, Heston Blumenthal, Rene Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen, and Michel Bras.

Nine of the world’s top chefs held what they called a “G9 meeting” in Lima, Peru, where they unveiled their save-the-world, “starry-eyed manifesto” for future chefs.

“Cooking is not only a response to the basic human need of feeding ourselves, and is also more than the search for happiness,” they said.

“Cooking is a powerful, transformative tool that, through the joint effort of co-producers ” whether we be chefs, producers or eaters ” can change the way the world nourishes itself.”

“We dream of a future in which the chef is socially engaged, conscious of and responsible for his or her contribution to a just and sustainable society.”

Their open letter to future chefs outlined duties towards nature, society, knowledge and ethics.

“Our work depends on nature’s gifts. As a result we all have a responsibility to know and protect nature.”

“Through our cooking, our ethics and our aesthetics, we can contribute to the culture and identity of a people, a region, a country.”

“We can also serve as an important bridge to other cultures.”

“Beforehand you only had to cook and feed, but we have now seen that we can also have other roles to play.”

“We are at a special, inspirational moment, in which we are becoming more than just people who make food or own businesses,” Redzepi, head chef at Noma in Copenhagen told Peru’s El Comercio newspaper.

Not everyone was awestruck and enamored with this display of enlightenment and omnipotent benevolence from self appointed culinary Saints.

Just ask Jay Rayner, a restaurant critic and novelist who writes:

“The ‘G9′ chefs’ manifesto to save humanity is an act of such ludicrous self regard you’d need an oxygen tank to get your breath back”.

I adore chefs, writes Rayner. Where the good ones are concerned I am an unashamed, knicker-throwing groupie. But sometimes, when they begin to believe the hype, even the best of them need to be taken round the back of the bike sheds for a serious talking to.

“The night they all sat around the fast-emptying bottle of Fernet Branca hugging each other, staring intently into each other’s eyes and saying solemn things like ‘I am a bridge to other cultures’ must have been a complete doozy”.

Top Chefs Vow to Save The World in ManifestoRayner reminds us that these G9 haute cuisine paragons have made their living catering mostly to the gilt-edged excessive desires of the aristocracy:

“Just before it closed a couple of months back El Bulli flogged the entire restaurant for a night to a champagne company, who flew in some of their invited guests on a private jet, before helicoptering them in to dinner.

“Huge brigades of cooks are involved in the preparation of the world’s very best ingredients, often sourced from some distance away. A single meal at one of these restaurants will leave a carbon footprint an elephant could sleep in”.

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