there’s a rendezvous
of strangers around the coffee urn tonight
all the gypsy hacks, the insomniacs–Tom Waits/Eggs & Sausage
I knew that food would be the way to engage.
You’ve got to put something in your mouth to get your ears open
-Sansa Sambiel/Anthony Bourdain, Parts Unknown, Joburg
Earlier this week I watched an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s show set in Johannesburg.
A lot of it escaped me (thanks, codeine and cold medicine!) but one part caught my attention to the point that I backed up and watched it again. In a part of the city called Hillbrow, formerly a white business district but now home to a multi-ethnic population, Bourdain spoke with a man they referred to as a gastronomic smuggler who runs an eat shop. A tiny little shop selling carry out food. His thing is to take ideas from all of the people living in his neighborhood and fuse them together. Food from countries all over Africa and the rest of the world.
He wanted to bring people together through food. People buy food, and then congregate in front of the eat shop to talk about…everything. His enthusiasm was really magnetic. He had no formal training in cooking, just a love of food and bringing people together. He was a bit like a Bob Marley of cooking.
The part that got really got my attention, even through the codeine fog, was that sometimes you have to distract people’s thinking brains to get them to really relate to each other. He does it with food.
You can do it with alcohol, of course, but at a certain point too much booze means less communication. Of course, some people are also belligerent when they drink.
You might want to say you can do it with books…philosophy…but where do people discuss the ideas? Over food. Over drinks. In restaurants and homes.
How did they put it in “Game of Thrones?” Bread and salt?
There are two things you have to do to get people to talk to each other: get them into the same physical space, and get them to relax and lower their guard enough to talk.
Food does both.
We might call it a ceremonial tradition, or hospitality, but what it really is is getting people together in a space where they know they are safe. When you’re safe, you relax and let your guard down. And then, if people put food in front of you, you eat it and talk about the food…gradually you don’t even realize you’re talking about other things.
Maybe it’s hard to plot evil if your mouth is full?
There’s a certain naiveté at the core of the idea. It’s not like hospitality has ever really been inviolate–and there’s a reason for food tasters, after all, but maybe if you’re not a king or a politician there is a lot of truth to the idea that something as simple as eating and talking can lead to good things.
Maybe it only works for regular people.