Writer Jay Rayner Kind Of Wants Chefs To Shut Up And Stay In The Kitchen

Jay Rayner is an erudite social commenter and foodie zeitgeist temperature taker (or whatever we call these chef-obsessed days we live in) and the author of the ironically titled Happy Eater column for London's Guardian. He's also sort of a Simon Cowell character — appearing on cooking competition shows like Top Chef and a daytime cookery show called Eating with the Enemy. He wrote a book called A Greedy Man In A Hungry World that has received nice reviews.

We'll always click on Rayner linkage, which is what we did this morning to find a sharp take on the idea of chefs as agents of social change. He takes to the MAD Feed blog to respond to Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser's recent remarks about the importance of chefs getting out of the kitchen and into the conversation. "Food serves as a foundation for other, more important things: family, community, social harmony, justice," Schlosser writes, citing Alice Waters' "heartfelt activism" as the gold standard.

Rayner is not having much of this. "It takes a certain sort of nerdy brilliance to push forward the frontiers of gastronomy day after day [and] I give thanks for that nerdy brilliance," he writes, going on to give credit to the modern chef's capacity to think creatively and critically. But Rayner believes a chef's thought leadership can only go so far. That there are limits to the "doing" part; that a busy chef running a restaurant only has so much time for following up on the symposium speeches and newspaper editorials. He cites 2009's "self-regarding" Lima declaration and failed attempts at chef-led hospital food reform in England as examples. "It's nice that a chef skilled in knocking out twelve-course tasting menus wants to be a part of the solution," he writes. "But to have serious conversations around that stuff, we do have to understand the limits of its application."

You can read both sides on the MAD Feed Blog:

Schlosser: Chefs Should Get Out Of The Kitchen

Rayner: Being A Chef Doesn't Make You An Agent Of Social Change