Gary’s French Chef

A friend of mine grew up in gritty Gary, Indiana, a working-class suburb of Chicago. The nicest restaurant in town was a French bistro that was as famous for its food as its attitude. The tempestuous French expat who owned the place and ruled its kitchen with an iron fist was something of a local celebrity. His exacting standards and temper tantrums were the stuff of legend. Dude was known to lose it with some regularity: hurling abuse at employees and patrons alike in heavily-accented English.

At seventeen, my friend left Gary for college in Bloomington, where she fell in love with French literature. This newfound passion soon led to a year abroad in Strasbourg, where she perfected her French and participated in des Événements de mai 1968. When she got back to Gary a year later, her overjoyed parents insisted on taking her out to “the nice place” to celebrate her return. She tried to engage the moody chef in his mother tongue soon after they got to the restaurant. But to no avail. He refused to respond. In fact, he looked strangely frightened. Alas, it soon became clear that he wasn’t really French. Indeed, he didn’t even speak French!

This is the problem of knowledge, is it not? How do you know if the French chef is really French if you don’t speak French? How do you know who’s right about climate change if you don’t speak climatology? Who’s right about GMOs if you don’t speak botany? Who’s right about police brutality if you don’t speak black? As Aaron Haspel rightly observes in Everything (2015): “To determine who is expert requires an expert.”