In 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte established the French Legion of Honor. In 1994, Chef Bernard Loiseau was inducted into this order for his transcendent contributions to French cuisine. It is France’s highest honor, military or civilian. In 2003, he stuck a shotgun into his mouth and blew his brains out the back of his skull.
After a food magazine downgraded his restaurant, rumors began circulating that Michelin would do the same. Rather than see it become true, Chef Bernard took a bow and exited stage left.
This is, to any normal person, an extreme reaction to the opinion of a tire company about your cooking. And I am aware that the normal people are correct. But Chef Bernard was no normal person; Chef Bernard is my hero. He embodied a world in which people aren’t flippant about beauty and craft — the world I want to live in.
My restaurant in Washington, D.C., Butterworth’s, is in no danger of losing a Michelin star because we have none. But we sweep behind the refrigerators, pressure wash the sidewalk, and prepare food the hard way. Our French fries take three days to make. The sauce for our bone marrow escargot, two. When lamb is on the menu, it is usually a whole lamb, butchered in its entirety down to each cut. We do these things because we cannot help ourselves. Because we aren’t sure who we would be without it.
Next door is one of many cannabis dispensaries in D.C. Down the block, two more. One block further down Pennsylvania Avenue, three more. They have names like “BluntSlut” and “Highway420” in purple neon and QR codes taped crookedly to the glass. At eleven o’clock in the morning, men stand outside watching videos on their phones at full volume while smoke drifts through the front doors whenever a guest opens it. There have been plenty of nights when I am getting crushed by orders for tartare and steak au poivre while a man in pajama pants leans against a lime scooter and screams into the street.
Washington, D.C.’s marijuana laws exist in a state of deliberate confusion, which I know because I spent an unpleasant afternoon trying to understand them. In 2014, D.C. voters legalized personal possession. But Congress, which controls the city’s budget, blocked D.C. from licensing or regulating commercial sales. The result is a market that cannot legally exist and cannot be stopped from existing. For years, the city’s solution was the “gift economy,” where if you bought a sticker, marijuana appeared in your hand. It had the logic of children. Then the city cracked down, raided sixty-odd shops, and arrived at its replacement: declare yourself a medical patient by phone in four minutes, walk into a licensed dispensary, and buy whatever you like. The transaction is legal now. The logic is still childish.
It is so glaringly obvious that weed, as it is currently quasi-regulated in D.C., is not working. But no one seems interested in resolving the underlying issues. Congress lacks the attention span, and the city has only barely managed to replace one absurdity with a slightly less absurd one. One week, the city raided dispensaries only to have those same dispensaries reopen under different names with the same employees beneath the same neon the very next week. “Cloud9” became “ZaMuseum.” Somebody printed new menus, and the whole performance resumed. This week, we have “marijuana lounges” coming, so you can gather with fellow gentlemen and scholars to smoke your weed in person.
I do not especially care if people smoke weed. Civilization has always contained vice. Restaurants are vice. Alcohol certainly is. Butter and cigarettes and beautiful women in black dresses and staying out too late on a Tuesday are, too. Some of the best parts of life are. But D.C.’s haphazard weed culture is not a vice; it’s a cash grab by the dumbest people you’ve ever met, and overseen by its laziest.
This malaise seems to be the entire working policy of D.C. Most days feel like the Do Lung Bridge scene in Apocalypse Now. The bridge keeps getting shelled. Music blares in the background. Martin Sheen’s character asks a soldier, “Who’s your commanding officer?” The kid with a machine gun in his hand asks: “Ain’t you?”
If you squint, there are times when Pennsylvania Avenue feels vaguely ceremonial. It feels like “The Capital,” “The White House,” “America,” and its great empire. But more soberly, it mostly looks like empty storefronts and a Reddit homepage come to life — a place where you can hand-cut potatoes while down the street somebody sells pre-rolled joints named after cartoon characters.
I do not have Bernard’s courage. I am still here — still sweeping the sidewalk and butchering the lamb. I have yet to put a shotgun in my mouth. While I take responsibility for every bad meal my customers have or every drink not served perfectly cold, this particular problem is not my fault. In fact, no one can agree on whose fault it is.
Congress says it’s a local matter. The city says Congress tied its hands. We are led by morons who do not care that the day-to-day exhaustion of this lack of leadership is absorbed by idiots like me, who still show up every day, still caring.
Shortly after Chef Bernard died, Michelin announced that his restaurant would retain all three stars. He never knew. I think about that on the mornings when cooking well is enough and on the mornings when it isn’t.
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Bart Hutchins is the chef and owner of Butterworth’s. He’s on X @whiteguyfieri.
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