Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp knifed man

I’ve been on a quite necessary and long overdue cleaning kick recently. I won’t go into the why and how here, both because that’s not what this post is about and because really it’s inexcusable, but my apartment hasn’t really been cleaned since Dear Old Dad was in town in August.

Yep. Soak that in for awhile.

Anyway, as I was excavating my couch and coffee table from beneath 6 months of research, 7 years of teaching evaluations, and more mail order catalogues than one person should ever receive, I stumbled upon several months worth of the Washington Post’s Food section. Some of them were completely intact; with others I’d taken the preliminary step of cutting out the recipes I wanted to save (for things like Pork Tenderloin with Pears and Sweet Sherry).

While I was trying to decide whether I really needed a recipe for Ginger-Poached Salmon with Orange and Honey (pro: it only takes 25 minutes! Con: one of the people I cook for most often is allergic to fish!), a loose rectangle of newspaper floated out from between the pages. I picked it up, wondered why I’d saved only the top left corner of a recipe for Udon Noodles, and was about to throw it out when I turned it over and realized that I’d saved it not for the booze adverts and recipe fragments on the back, but for the picture of Hook chef Barton Seaver on the front.

Mmmm. Barton Seaver. Glaaaaaaarrrrrghhhh, I thought. I scurried over to my bulletin board to pin him up, partially obscuring an ancient Diamondbacks ticket and a devotional card of St. Mary Magdalene in the process.

As I surveyed my work, I realized that there was only one other picture of a hot dude tacked to my bulletin board, and it was this one (see right) of Bradley Cooper. As Jack Bourdain. In the short lived but awesome Kitchen Confidential. Holding a giant fish.

Mmmmm. Bradley Cooper. Glaaaaaaaarrrrrgggghh.

It was hard not to notice the commonalities between the two pictures. I mean, naturally, they’re both tall guys with a particular type of smarmy bastard good looks that I find irresistible. But they’re also. . .dressed the same.

“I think I have a chef fetish,” I told some friends.

“Mmmmm, chefetish. . .” said MG!

The more I thought about it, the more I realized how things could be explained with that one simple but perfect neologism: chefetish. For example: I’m one of the few people on the face of the earth who actually prefers Top Chef to Project Runway (even prior to the current lackluster season of PR). In the past I’ve put it off to the fact that I know more about food than I do about fashion; that my palate is rather educated whereas my fashion sense is limited to deciding whether to wear my red crew neck cable knit sweater or my blue v-neck cable knit sweater on a given day. I’ve also put it off to the fact that I can and have made some of the recipes from Top Chef (Ilan’s a douche but his corn and bacon salad is to die for) whereas I couldn’t and won’t sit down and make a dress out of Twizzlers, no matter how awesome that might seem.

But isn’t it just as likely that my preference has something to do with the fact that the first winner of Top Chef looks like this (see left):

. . .while the first winner of Project Runway looks like. . .well. . . this (see right):

(Yes, they're both extraordinarily talented in their own way, but be honest: who do you want to wake up next to?)

Winners aside, even the good looking guys on Project Runway tend to be of the same sort: hot gay club dudes. You all know that I think Jack is totally the hotness and ridonkulously pretty to look upon in his boxer briefs (let’s enjoy that again for a moment, shall we?), and I would totally set him up with any of my friends if things don’t work out with him and Dale*.


But his type of teh hotness doesn’t make me want to leap through my TV screen and fling myself bodily at him like Harold’s does. And hot gay club dude is pretty much the only type of hot you get on Project Runway, whereas on Top Chef, you get hot gay club dude (Dale) plus a little of this:

. .. and some of this (see left):

. . .and a couple of these (see below right):

[Side note: it's now taking all of my restraint not to write a "Mambo Number 5" about all the dudes from Top Chef. "A little bit of Harold, he's so fine/ a little bit of Stephen, with some wine/ A little bit of Marcel with his hair/ a little bit of Sammy's sultry stare./ A little bit of CJ, he's so tall/ and did you hear he only has one ball?/A little bit of Cliff and a lot of Tre/a little bit of Dale (even though he's gay) . ."].

Maybe it’s that for whatever reason, cheffing attracts many dudes of the sort I find so attractive—despite their variations in height, race, age, etc., all of the samples you see above are of genus smarmmius bastardum. It’s their one unifying factor—well, that and the uniform.

Ah yes, the uniform. Let’s not discount the power of the whites. To make an analogy, perhaps chef’s whites: women :: French maid’s uniforms: men. They’ve got the same element of sexy servility to them—someone fiercely attractive is made more so by the fact that their clothing indicates that they’re working for you in a domestic-ish capacity.

But also, chef’s whites have the same awesome power that a tuxedo or a good little black dress does: they’re so basic that you stop thinking about what the person is wearing, and focus in on what they actually look like. It stops being about attire and becomes about appearance. How else can you explain how this (see left):

. . .I mean, excuse moi¸ but ew. . . .

. . .can turn into this? (at right):

Nummy.

So maybe it’s just the uniform. Maybe you could put any man—even someone I find utterly repugnant on a physical level and absolutely loathsome in terms of personality—into a chef’s coat, and I’d find them attractive.

Hm. Or maybe not.

On a completely and totally unrelated note, Hook is participating in Restaurant Week for lunch. I may or may not eat there every day. Because I’m so very, very fond of. . .fish.

*Though as I’ve mentioned before, I totally want things to work out for him and Dale.