美国知名厨师、电视节目主持人安东尼波登在今年 6 月初辞世。他在节目中散发出的真挚情感令人印象深刻，骤然离世的消息也特别令人感到不捨。波登曾表示：「每道菜背后必定有一段深远的历史，通常是令人难过的」。他在节目中所呈现的除了跨越文化的体验外，还总带着对人性更高层次的关怀。透过这篇关于食物如何反映生活的访谈，我们可以一同纪念他所留给我们的精神。

波登是美国知名厨师，22 岁时进入美国烹饪学院就读，38 岁当上纽约一间法式餐厅的行政主厨。自 2002 年开始电视节目主持人生涯，着名节目包含《No Reservations》、《Parts Unknown》，后者在 2013 至 2016 年四度获得艾美奖最佳知识类节目奖。

除了烹饪外，波登也致力于写作，1999 年刊出一篇名为《Don’t Eat Before Reading This》的文章，揭露纽约餐厅人员私下的问题，此后声名大噪。以此文延伸的第一篇书籍作品《Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly》卖出超过 100 万本。

波登近年最有名的一集节目，是与美国前总统欧巴马一同在越南河内品嚐当地小吃。此次行程对维安人员而言非常突然且具有挑战，因为他们造访的小吃店空间相对狭小，所有的维安与剧组人员都必须待在店外。然而，波登认为这倒是一个很好的机会，让整段节目的互动更真实自然。

波登对厨艺的热爱始于他 10 岁时一趟法国探亲之旅，一位友善的渔夫邻居邀他们全家到他的渔船上一日游，在船上波登吃到生平第一颗现採的新鲜生蚝，他形容他在那一口中生蚝似乎嚐到了某种未来。虽然青少年时期的波登曾梦想成为漫画家，但这个美好记忆从未在他心中淡化，最终使他踏上厨师之路。

波登说他最讨厌做的菜是美式早午餐，因为在他厨师生涯遭遇挫败，无法在知名餐厅任职时，只能在职缺多的美式早午餐店中工作度日。煎欧姆蛋、法式吐司的味道，总是让他想起那段痛苦的日子，是一个代表羞辱、不堪的味道。然而当女儿出生后，他试着改变这个心态，因为当女儿带朋友来家里玩时，弄个早午餐吧檯总是能让孩子们兴奋不已。

节录自 CBC News 2016 年访谈

Q1：To what extent is food the best, or maybe least biased glimpse into how a society, a country, and economy works?

食物是不是最适合、或相对公正地窥视一个社会、国家经济状态的事物？能看到什幺程度？

Well, there is nothing more political. There’s nothing more revealing of the real situation on the ground whether the system works or not. I mean whatever your philosophical foundation of your personal belief system, it’s difficult to spend time in Cuba, particularly like 10 years ago, eat with ordinary people and come out of it thinking, “Wow, this system is really working out for everybody”. Who gets to eat, who doesn’t get to eat, what they are eating, I mean the food itself on the plate is usually the end result of a very long and often very painful story.

没有任何事物比食物更具政治性了。食物能最真实的呈现一个地方的经济系统是否有效。无论你怎幺看古巴，要在那里生活上一阵子真的是有些痛苦的，更别说在 10 年前。在那里和平民百姓一起吃饭，然后想着「哇！这种经济模式在这里还真的行得通」。谁有东西吃？谁没有东西吃？人们都吃些什幺？盘中的食物通常都来自一个又长又痛的故事。

There’s a lot of food preservation, there’s a lot of pickling. You know certain countries their cuisine very much reflects either a siege mentality or abundance or intermittent periods of difficulty. Also if you go in not as a journalist but just as somebody who’s asking simple questions like “What do you like to eat,” “What makes you happy,” people tend to drop their defenses and tell you extraordinary things. They’re very revealing.

每个国家都会有很多食物的保存方法、很多腌渍的食物。食物反映出了国家的不同状态，无论是受害者的心态、食物的丰饶程度、或是常常需要共体时艰等等。 如果你不以一个记者的姿态访问当地，而是像个路人一样随性问一些简单问题，像是「你喜欢吃什幺？」「什幺东西会让你开心？」，人们比较会卸下心防，然后非常坦白的告诉你一些很独特的事情。

Q2：Where do you get the stuff? I mean how you get all this food tells you so much about how an economy functions?

你是怎幺找到这些能够反映经济的食物的？

I think maybe the strongest example snuck up on us when we were shooting in Egypt before the Arab Spring. We wanted to shoot a scene with a Ful [Ful Medames], which is an everyday sort of food which working-class [people eat in] Cairo. And our fixers and local translators suddenly were all up in arms. “No, no, no, you must not shoot this. You can’t shoot Ful.”… “It’s forbidden. We’ll kick you out” [they told us]. We ended up getting the shot anyway. There were devious strategies.

最显着的例子就是在埃及拍摄的那集，那是在阿拉伯之春发生的前夕。我们想拍摄一个埃及传统炖蚕豆的镜头，这是平民阶级再日常不过的食物，但突然间我们的地陪跟翻译跑过来阻止我们「不不不，你们不能拍这个！」「官方规定不能拍，你拍了的话他们会赶你走」，即便我们最后还是用了一些旁门左道拍到了这个镜头。

But what I think what they were concerned about was they understood it’s not just typical, it’s all there is to eat. The army controlled, I guess, the flour supply. There’d been bread riots. They were not so much worried about how it would look outside the country, but the show is aired within the country and I didn’t think they wanted their own people seeing it. Particularly afterward episode of the same show shot in France.

我想当局是意识到了这道菜所象徵的意义，当时似乎因为有些粮食的暴动，所以军队控制了麵粉的供应，那道炖肉豆就成了当地居民唯一能吃的食物。他们真正在意的不是外国的观点，而是不希望国内其他地区的人，透过此节目看见这件事。况且在这节目的前几集，是在法国拍摄的，那将会形成鲜明对比。

On my show I get the comments “Stick to the food, man” “We don’t want to hear politics from you. You’re a chef.” “Shut up, we don’t want your political opinion.” Okay, fair enough, but it’s difficult to not notice the elephant in the room.

“How come you only have these fish?”

“Well we can’t go any further out to sea.”

“How come you’re missing two of your limbs?” in Laos,

“When I was a little boy, I was walking around in the field and stepped on one of the 8 million tons of ordnance you guys left in my country.”

Look, those are inescapable facts. How you choose to feel about them and interpret them is up to you.

我有收到一些关于我节目的评论，像「专心讨论食物吧！」「我们不想听一个厨师谈政治」「闭嘴，我们不需要你的政治意见」。好吧！我觉得这样说还算公道。但你其实没有办法掩耳盗铃。

例如问：「为什幺你只有这一点点渔获？」，他们回答「因为我们不能再出海更远了。」*；
在寮国问一位朋友「为什幺你失去了双腿？」，他回答「我小时候走在路上，不小心踩到了你们留在这里的地雷」。

这种问答都会显露许多不可避免的事实。但你要如何感受、如何诠释它，就取决于你自己了。

*因为以色列封锁加萨走廊，限制巴勒斯坦渔船活动範围不能离岸超过 16 公里，导致渔获量非常有限。