At last night’s premiere of Julie & Julia at the Ziegfeld Theater, reporter Bennett Marcus spoke to Anthony Bourdain, who defended blogger Julie Powell against her detractors (“anyone who honors Julia, on balance, is good for the world”) and professed his love for Julia Child’s cookbooks (“When all else fails, Julia’s always there”). Of course, Bourdain has been notoriously hard on the new wave of TV toques, most of all Sandra Lee (you’ll recall him implying she was “as stupid and talentless and messed up as Britney Spears”). But as our president knows, cocktail time heals all wounds. And just as Bourdain was once forced to mingle with arch nemesis Rachael Ray at a South Beach party, he finally had an encounter with Sandra Lee last night.
According to his No Reservations blog, it was “more terrifying and traumatic an event than being smashed by the grill of a Peterbilt, pulled up into the wheel well, dragged for a while, only to have my shredded remnants left by the side of the road, wondering, in my last moments of consciousness, ‘What the hell happened?’” His account of the conversation is short on details (she said “nice things” and called him “a very naughty man”), but do have a read and enjoy him squirming in front of her boyfriend, Andrew Cuomo.
