Fightin’ Words: Carlos Fernandez Translator Calls Anthony Bourdain a “Chupacabras”

It will come as no surprise to you, possums, that, like just about everyone, we are great fans of last season contestant Carlos Fernandez. Miss XaXa developed the mother of all gay crushes on him, anointed him her Chulo Chef, and drove six hours to eat and gossip up a storm with Carlos at the Hi-Life Café, the restaurant he runs with his charming husband Chuck.

Naturally, we were thrilled to learn that Carlos has a gig writing a blog for Bravo, doing cooking demonstrations on the unfortunately named “Miami Spice,” and appearing on Bravo’s Spanish-language sister network, Telemundo. We want only the best for our Chulo Chef.

Imagine our dismay, then, when we came across an interesting little discrepancy while comparing Carlos’ blog and the Spanish translation on Yahoo! Telemundo.

On his Bravo blog, Carlos writes, “It was nice to see Chef Anthony Bourdin. (“Hey Chef Tony, Alex says hi!”) I don’t understand why he didn’t judge the Quickfire Challenges. Perhaps that was filmed too early in the day for a bloodsucker! Ha!”

(A smidge of background info: after judging the Thanksgiving episode last season, Bourdain referred to Carlos as “Alex Fernandez” on Michael Ruhlman’s blog. You should know, though, that we found something equally egregious. On Frank Bruni’s blog in the New York Times, the caption lists Carlos Fernandez as “Carlos Rodriguez.” It’s so hard to keep them Latins straight, much to Miss XaXa’s despair and Chuck’s gain.)

At any rate, we think that by “bloodsucker,” Carlos meant “vampire,” since Bourdain is a notorious nocturnal flâneur (though not as nocturnal as John Travolta). And yet, the Telemundo translator rendered it as “chupacabras.”

For those of you who may not remember, a “chupacabras” (or “goat sucker,” from its “habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats”) is “a lizard-like being, appearing to have leathery or scaly greenish-gray skin and sharp spines or quills running down its back…[,] a dog or panther-like nose and face, a forked tongue protruding from it, large fangs, and to hiss and screech when alarmed, as well as leave a sulfuric stench behind. When it screeches, some reports note that the chupacabra’s eyes glow an unusual red, then give the witnesses nausea.”

We will not go into whether this is an accurate description of Anthony Bourdain (though we will say we thought he looked remarkably well-rested and smooth-skinned on last week’s show; Clinique had better look into the rejuvenating properties of goat’s blood). We simply think it’s unwise for Carlos’ translator to get our Chulo Chef into a scrape with the old bloodsucker himself.

Miss XaXa, however, is having none of it. “Come on. Bourdain would probably love being called a chupacabra. It makes him more of a badass.”

Be that as it may, we ask only one thing of you, Tony. Don’t blame Alex. No tuvo la culpa.