Raymond Bulman's Saucy Side: A Dark Look into His Signature Dish
The Hole's Gallery director and partner thinks he knows his way around the kitchen, but does he really?
I first became aware of Raymond Bulman's love of cooking in October of 2022. From what I could piece together on social, and IRL, Raymond likes to be in the kitchen. In fact, I think he prides himself on it.
Often, at gallery dinners, I think in an effort to be the center of attention, and also to feed people, Ray Ray can be seen front and center at the stove, chopping it up, stirring, mixing and getting down. In fact when you google “Raymond Bulman” one image in particular of him pops up of him grating cheese in an almost cartoonish way given his size and the cheese grater (the man is 6-7” and in many ways this seems to also dictate his personality, or is probably the most interesting thing about him). But when you look a little closer at what he has prepared, things start to fall apart for me.
A Googled image of Raymond Bulman grating cheese over pasta.
Raymond, who is the director at the downtown NYC gallery The Hole, I think, genuinely thinks he is the next Anthony Bourdain. And honestly, I am here to tell you Ray Ray, you are not.
In February, to coincide with a show opening at the LA Hole, Ray hosted a gallery dinner. He not only manned the grill, but can also be seen erratically stirring a rose colored sauce. A video surfaced from Instagram of Raymond cooking that made the rounds and eventually into my group chat where one friend dubbed him “the chaotic cooker.”
Well, it stuck. This kind of chaos had also seemed to enter into the sauce. His signature white button with his French cuffs rolled up almost dipped into the sauce with a visible stain, like you would do with a piece of bread to savor the last bite. However, Ray's dipped cuff did not have the same effect. I found myself looking past that and was fixated on the sauce. The sauce. Always Raymond's sauce. And what was wrong with it.
More cheese on pasta and the sauce in question.
Here you can see several images of the sauce in question. These images are taken of video footage of Raymond cooking on two different nights in late February of this year. Both times, the sauce takes on an orangey tinge, and is thick and gooey in appearance. I do not see tomatoes, or the presence of onion or other sauce ingredients. Eventually, Raymond takes a large pepper mill in one video and begins to crack vigorously. In another video, he can be seen adding heaps of Parmesan cheese.
The Chaotic Cooker in action Raymond Bulman image from a screenshot of IG footage of the night in question.
In another disturbing cooking video that surfaced over the weekend, Raymond can be seen just tossing hunks of mozzarella on top of his molten orange sauce paired with what looks like macaroni. A sauce such as this is generally paired with a tubular shaped pasta in an effort to get the most out of sauce, a rigatoni, penne, Canneroni, etc is usually the best choice. A Marconi and this is just not going to do a cream based sauce justice.
The cooking style combined with Raymond's handling of the cheese has left me with many questions and concerns about his cooking abilities. As well as the mismatched pasta and sauce choice. He seems ill equipped in the kitchen based on these findings. This is also the opposite persona that Raymond wants to present to the world. To him, he appears to be an excellent cook. And people eat his food. But when I tried to find someone who had eaten the sauce, that's when things became sticky. People are sure they have seen people eat it, but no one wanted to talk about it. Did they get food poisoning? Does Raymond make them sign an NDA upon consumption of his secret signature sauce and its recipe?
As someone who is Italian, and grew up eating my way around the boot both stateside and in the motherland, and is pretty good in the kitchen myself, I identified it as a vodka/tomato cream sauce immediately... but something was off. The color, the texture, the way it coated the wrong pasta was all just a crime against the food and its ingredients.
In short, it hurt my Italian soul. It's slimy and thick appearance, has all the earmarks of something that had gone awry in Raymond's kitchen or recipe. All of it was offensive to me. And yet, more people continue to tag him and delight in his bizarre kitchen ways.
After the third video from last weekend of Raymond making what I had dubbed his signature sauce, I had had enough. I needed answers, and I reached out to the sauce man himself and the gallery.
The Hole dmed me back regarding my inquiry. Following that interaction, I sent Raymond an email to see if I could get him on the record about the sauce, get a sense of the recipe, and maybe even taste it. I also suggested a blind taste testing to see how it might hold up against Rao's, Paul Newman's and the tried and true, Trader Joe's creamy tomato basil. However, after two follow-ups,he could not be reached for comment.I was able to DM with whoever handles The Hole's social media and they asked if I had tried the access, and what I found to be offensive about it. I suggested setting up a taste testing, or even a blind taste test, but it didn't get that far.
A close up of the sauce and the chaotic cooking scene.
I have not given up on getting Raymond on the record about my sauce inquiry but it has led me here to further investigate what is happening and also some pictures to back up my claim. Please find several images of the sauce in question below.
My best guess, as well as several friends, is that this is a tomato-based cream sauce, most likely Vodka. When it comes to Italy and vodka sauces things also get a little sauce there too. The origins are murky and while there is evidence of the cream-based sauce coming from Italy in the late 1940s, however, the cream-based tomato sauce goes back centuries, and I am interested in when it came to the US and as many things do, became popularized and changed. Penne alla Vodka as we have come to know and love It had a resurgence in the 1970s and 1980s. This version has become a staple of Italian restaurants all over the US.
The much beloved sauce is even the basis of a documentary, Disco Sauce: The True Story of Penne Alla Vodka which was released in 2022. It has reached an almost celebrity-like scale in its overall popularity but also in who is cooking. In 2023, Gigi Hadid did her own take on the sauce and posted it on IG making people go crazy for it yet again.
While I am still waiting on confirmation of Raymond's sauce, I am filled with questions and dread. Is he using pasta water to thicken it? What brand of cream does he use? Where did he learn to tear mozzarella in this way? Will he continue to make the sauce this way? Will he ever learn?
If that wasn't enough, my Raymond cooking anxieties were kicked into high mode over the weekend when yet more footage of his damage in the kitchen emerged for Easter dinner. In the pictures posted to the chaotic cooker's personal IG, Raymond, looking much like a disheveled tall Jesus who just emerged from the cave, can be seen cooking lamb on the grill. The image features a close up of Raymond and one saucy hand holding the piece of traditional holiday meat titled “lamb jam.” This image has been seared into my brain and is something I am desperately trying to forget.
A screenshot of Raymond’s Easter dinner, “lamb jam.”
In the meantime, what I am hoping to do is to get answers, put together a sauce intervention team, and be able to make contact to taste the sauce in question. I am not sure if I will ever recover from the trauma of Raymond's saucy ways, but I hope in time and with the right trauma counselor, and cooking shows, I will be able to.