Letter to the writers of an awful article:

In the April 22, 2010 issue of the Twin Cities Onion, the A.V. Club ran a feature of 5 places the authors would hope Anthony Bourdain would visit should he create a Twin Cities No Reservations episode. That bucket of swill that some might call writing can be found here.

In response, I wrote the authors a reply that will hopefully shake them out of their WASP-y bubble. The point of food culture is it's vast, delicious diversity. I will have no one misrepresenting Twin Cities food culture in the deplorable way the Onion writers did.

	from:	Cristeta Boarini
to:		avclub@theonion.com
date:		Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 7:54 PM
subject		: Feature Piece Concerning Anthony Bourdain is a Disgrace

To Steve McPherson and Lindsey Thomas, writers of the No Reservations Twin Cities Feature.

It has come to my attention that you two know nothing about the Twin Cities food culture except cheap places to get beer and dives wherein you can cure your hangover the next morning. If you had done any decent research, other than to throw darts at a map of your favorites, you might have produced a mildly entertaining article. Instead, you print a completely oblivious feature for which, I question if you even left your offices.

If you had read the book that propelled Anthony Bourdain into the spotlight in the first place--Kitchen Confidential--you would have noted in the end how he praises Minneapolis as the only place in the world to get authentic Vietnamese food outside of Vietnam. If you had ever walked around the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul, you would've noticed that the largest Somali population outside of Somalia resides in the Twin Cities. Even walking around downtown, you would find places like Subo or Fogo de Chao--places whose food is not based on what is traditionally white and "safe."

I challenge you to go down University in Midway and find a seedy Vietnamese place where the staff doesn't speak English. I dare you to walk around Cedar-Riverside and sit & eat in a Somalian cafe with the locals. There you'll find food that's more precious to the proprietors than the commercialized fare than that which is peddled at Target Field.

Minnesota is not a place where you can get just Scandinavian food on a stick anymore. Anthony Bourdain, a man who's profession is travel and cultural awareness, recognizes that fact with all his shows and publications. It's a shame you published an article as ethnocentric as yours in homage to him.