On the Antarctic Ice With Anthony Bourdain
'He didn’t come for the food. He wanted to know about our climate research.
In February 2017, I was nearing the end of four months at a remote outpost in Antarctica, gathering data for my Ph.D. thesis. Donald Trump had been inaugurated a month earlier and already the words “climate change” had been purged from the White House website. The mood among the scientists at the bottom of the world had changed drastically. We had been the forefront of studying climate change and suddenly we were being shunted aside.
Around the last week of our expedition to Lake Hoare, a barren, Martian-like region of the continent, the National Science Foundation, our sponsor, told us that Anthony Bourdain would be arriving to interview us at our field camp for his CNN show “Parts Unknown.” A lot of us knew Mr. Bourdain as a chef and foodie, but Antarctica isn’t known for its local cuisine. There are no Michelin-starred restaurants there (or any restaurants for that matter) and so amid the excitement, there was also a bit of confusion about his visit.
After a long, painfully cold day of sampling glacial meltwater to analyze its biological and chemical components, we all huddled around a laptop to prep for his arrival. We watched a clip of his earlier show “No Reservations” in which Mr. Bourdain eats a still-beating cobra heart.
“I hope he doesn’t want to try the penguin,” said Rae Spain, the field camp manager. She is known across the continent for her ability to take frozen chicken from 2012 and canned vegetables from an undetermined year and make it into a five-star Indian dish. She would be in charge of the food we would share with Mr. Bourdain and his crew.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/opinion/bourdain-antarctica-climate.html?
