It's been over a month since the Queen of Locovores, Alice Waters, announced to the world that out of all the foods she would choose as her last meal shark fins soup. This in itself was somewhat amusing giving Ms. Water's philosophy of eating locally; and it would've been just that if she'd left it there. However, when Anthony Bourdaine quipped that this was not "local", she responded, "[n]ow, I don't know, I've never gone out there, but we know there's sharks off the California coast. I'd be getting someone to take those fins off." Um, ok. So, shed get someone to go cut off fins from sharks just so she can have someone make her some shark fin soup???
Unsuprisingly, the hypocrisy of her response, not to mention the inhumane tone of it, landed her in hot PR water.
And here is where I get really annoyed.
Through a press relase through the Humane Society, Ms. Waters claimed that she'd only recently learned that "every year tens of millions of sharks, their fins brutally sliced off, are thrown back into the ocean to die." Um, Alice, wasn't this very thing you said you had wanted someone to do for you? Not to mention, how believeable is that that a well-traveled and experienced chef, esp. one in SF with its sizeable Chinese population, didn't know where shark fins come from?
It's one thing to say something surprisingly ignorant, it's another to later lie about it. The lying really gets me. That's probably why I had such a visceral reaction upon seeing her photo for an article she'd written about her start-up days in SF. Goodness I wanted to punch that smiling face of hers.
1 comment:
oh give her a break. at least she gave us the color purple.
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