A panning chefs don't deserve
CHEFS should stay in their kitchens and keep off our TV screens. That was the uncompromising message from last week's Channel 4 documentary Without Walls, entitled J'accuse. That statement, like most of the programme, was utter rubbish.
Why on earth should chefs be confined to their kitchens when there is an almost insatiable demand for their presence on food programmes? The documentary seemed hell-bent on destroying the reputations of a number of chefs and in the process denigrated an entire profession.
There was also an irony to the documentary, not intended by its makers, in that chefs were told not to be pompous and pretentious by a group of journalists who were pompous, pretentious and condescending in equal measure.
A more sinister side to the programme was the way the views of some industry experts were manipulated. Egon Ronay says taped interviews with him were used by the producer to make him appear to contradict or condemn persons whom he holds in high regard.
"I am incensed that the names of the Roux brothers and Anton Mosimann were not mentioned to me at the outset. I hold all three in the highest esteem… the programme implied differently," he said. As a result, Mr Ronay is calling for strict ground rules to prevent the abuse of editorial freedom by some TV documentary makers.
It is always easy to criticise people in the limelight. But it has to be remembered that it is they, along with a new generation of chefs with a lower profile, who have done so much to raise standards of cuisine in UK restaurants.
Everyone attending the Chef Conference in London on Monday was left in no doubt of the skills and commitment of chefs and how much has changed over the past decade. The quality and choice available to restaurant goers, whatever part of the country they live, has never been better.
Derek Cooper, who presents BBC Radio Four's Food Programme, told the conference: "We have an army of outstanding native chefs who have proved that it is possible to produce fresh, seasonal food of the highest quality."
Of course, not all chefs are perfect and a tiny minority do not perhaps always behave as they should when the cameras are on them. But most have done an outstanding job in raising awareness of good cuisine. That is a fact, but a fact completely ignored by the shabby and tacky programme J'accuse.
