French Chef Decries Bangkok Air Quality Between Long, Judgmental Drags of Unfiltered Cigarette
By JOHAN YIVES JOHANOPOLIS, EDITOR-AT-LARGE
BANGKOK, THAILAND — Jean-Baptiste Merdechaude, one of Bangkok’s premier purveyors of overpriced steak frites and existential disdain, took a brief intermission from berating his sous-chef Wednesday to deliver an impromptu streetside sermon on the city’s air pollution—pausing only for the occasional, theatrically resentful drag of a Gauloise cigarette.
“The air here," he announced to no one in particular outside his soi-side cuisine Provençale bistro, Le Mauvais Chat, “is like breathing through the underpants of a dying man.”
Onlookers—comprising three confused tourists and a soi cat he has threatened but not yet succeeded in poisoning—reported that Merdechaude stood on the pavement, a thumb tucked into his waistband as he gestured vaguely at the skyline while exhaling a nicotine cloud thick enough to violate Geneva protocols.
“The pollution is unacceptable!” he declared, flicking ash into a nearby garden bed. “In France, at least our smog is elegant! Here, it is vulgar... like your mango smoothies and your attempts at pasta.”
Witnesses say he punctuated his environmental critique by lighting another cigarette directly from the embers of the first, a move that an Australian backpacker described as “horrifying, but kinda sick.”
Merdechaude, who famously relocated to Bangkok after declaring that “everything in France had become illegal,” has long waged a one-man war against what he sees as the city's sensory offenses: neon signage, smiling customer service, and the “offensive” use of ketchup on fries.
“He smokes inside and complains about the air outside,” said Pim, a waitress who has worked under Merdechaude for six months and aged approximately six years in that time. “He once blamed a rat sighting on the quality of his customers.”
Local authorities confirmed that Merdechaude has lodged multiple complaints about Bangkok’s air quality—each handwritten in fountain pen on paper that smells strongly of anchovy aioli.
“It went on for three pages,” said a municipal employee who requested anonymity. “It started by quoting Charles de Gaulle and ended with a diatribe about the negative influence of Hollywood on modern architecture.”
As of press time, Merdechaude was seen taping a "NO VAPING" sign outside his restaurant while chain-smoking and muttering about “the death of common sense.”