Kitchen Confidential: Insider's Edition

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I’m asked a lot what the best thing about cooking for a living is. And it’s this: to be a part of a subculture. To be part of a historical continuum, a secret society with its own language and customs. To enjoy the instant gratification of making something good with one’s hands – using all one’s senses. It can be, at times, the purest and most unselfish way of giving pleasure (though oral sex has to be a close second).” Reading this only now, in 2021, you could say I missed that gourmet meal when it was piping hot. The timing turns out perfect for that documentary that just came out, however, and I’ll try to watch Road Runner within the next few days. This wasn’t planned, believe it or not. You need, for God's sake, a decent chef's knife. ONE good chef's knife, as large as is comfortable for your hand. Like a pro, you should use the tip of the knife for the small stuff, the area nearer the heel for the larger. Restaurants garnish their food. Why shouldn't you? Dip the sprigs in cold water, shake off excess, allow to dry for a few minutes, and slice the stuff, as thinly as you can, with that sexy new chef's knife. Kitchen Confidential is Bourdain's memoir that offers a deep look at the behind-the-scenes of restaurant kitchens. But two other things stood out to me in late Bourdains’s professional memoir. The first thing is his love of food, and the specific relationship he developed with food early in his childhood. The second thing is the frightening descriptions of his mental state, which I feel were largely overlooked as people were distracted with lushness and brilliant humor with which he described a world of restaurants. Having in mind Bourdain’s death from suicide in 2018, I can presume that he did not receive the adequate help that he desperately need, which is evident in his memoir written almost a decade before the tragic death.

Bourdain did not only taste oysters - he experienced the ecstatic sensory joy, the deep value of the sensual experience that can give meaning to life. In rich flavors, he experienced happiness, creativity, inspiration, id, the life force itself. For Bourdain, food is sex as the sensory pleasure that comes from food is life-invigorating and gives existence a new purpose. I have long been a Bourdain fan, we watched all of his shows and his enjoyment of food and travel has encouraged us more than once to get out of our comfort zones and to embrace new and unique experiences. I was devastated when I heard news of his suicide, I feel like the world is a bit less bright without him in it. I first heard of author, Anthony Bourdain, in a review discussion of his exposé of behind the scenes restaurant life on BBC Radio Four over twenty years ago. Two days later I bought and read Kitchen Confidential, and was totally blown away. I bought copies for family members, bored anyone who'd listen with excerpts and advice from the book, then started on a succession of other cook's tales, but none was as funny, scary, evocative as that by Bourdain. He remained an hero throughout the years to come. His recent, sad departure from this world prompted me to read the book again but this time literally in his own voice as he is also the narrator. And if I thought it breathtaking before, well, he really has to be heard to be believed. It was a bit of serendipity to find out that Road Runner, the Bourdain documentary, was just released the other day! I’m pleased to say that the quaint little, locally owned theater nearby did not suffer a pandemic collapse. Its doors are once again open, and I plan to make a trip there very soon to watch this. I might even grab dinner before. But not at one of those chain establishments. Tony wouldn’t approve.Fining both meaning and drive for life in sensory experiences is by no means a new stance in the world of literature. The ecstatic moments of sensual joy can be found in Proust's Swann's Way, and in Camus’s The Stranger and The Plague, where the characters experience the transference of absurdity of life in the sensory experience of the moment. But it is beautiful to find such an experience eloquently described in a memoir. Life replicates art and art replicates life. After a brief introduction in which he asserts his memoir is not intended as revenge, as he loves cooking and working as a chef, Bourdain reflects on his introduction to cooking as opposed to simply eating. As a child, he was served Vichyssoise, a cold soup, while traveling on the Queen Mary with his family heading for a vacation in France. This is the first food he remembers actually enjoying. When they arrive in France, Bourdain is initially unimpressed with French food until his parents, tired of his complaining, leave him and his brother in the car while they enjoy a sumptuous meal at the famous La Pyramide, leading Bourdain to think that food could be important as well as enjoyable. He begins to enjoy the hearty country staples of French provincial cooking. My chef friends in New York would have gouged out an eye or given up five years of their lives for the meal I was about to have... Each time the chef put another item down in front of us, I detected almost a dare, as if he didn't expect us to like what he was giving us, as if any time now he'd find something too much for our barbarian palates and crude, unsophisticated palates. Four and a half stars, rounded down because I know a few of those chapters are old articles Bourdain wrote for various publications, and I think the book would hold itself together better if it had been a more continuous narrative. But I will be looking up his other books and scour Netflix for his shows. Conscious of his influences and the inheritance of a specific literary legacy, Kitchen Confidential is often cannily referential. Martin correctly points out how closely Bourdain follows the beats of George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, a 1933 social-realist depiction of the anarchic and frequently thrilling life of restaurant staff laboring in a pitiless metropolis, which doubles as a Marxist critique of the desperate and even inhumane conditions encountered by those workers.

While certainly it's a little eerie (and a little sad) to read a memoir by someone who subsequently dies, that didn't spoil my enjoyment of this terrific, brash, funny, and at times introspective, book. Bourdain was a natural storyteller—not only did he use food to tell the stories he (and his bosses) wanted to create, but he also loved to talk about the ways the culinary world has changed through the years, how what restaurants serve (and what people eat) has changed, and how the role of the chef has changed with it. But even during his so-called "wilderness" years, his love of food led to an atypical perspective on race and kitchen people, his tribe. My (French) father always said that margarine is the devil's lubricant, and I think he would have disowned me if he had ever found that greasy blasphemy in my fridge. It's nice to have this opinion vindicated. Apologies to my father-in-law and his "I can't believe it's not butter" spray bottles: I will never surrender, Ed!Talk about a wild ride! According to Anthony Bourdain, life in the culinary world is not for the weak or faint of heart. It is a wild, crazy, high-low, full-speed ahead life!Coming from a family that summer vacationed in Europe, he was exposed to a variety of foods and found that it was heaven. In college he wasn't motivated or even interested and wound up flunking out. Still having a love for food he decided to try his hand at culinary school and becoming a chef.His first real job was a place in Provincetown during summer. He thought he knew it all, but found out he didn't. At that point he really started to learn what working in a kitchen was all about. The hard work, long hours and the crazies that work there.I took my time reading because of the fast pace, but also I had 2 to 3 other books I was reading at the same time. I enjoyed his writing, finding it funny, insane and wanting to read more. I've read two other books he's written; 'Gone Bamboo' and' Typhoid Mary; An Urban Historical.' Both were good. I plan to look for more of his work. I enjoyed his writing, finding it funny, insane and wanting to read more. I've read two other books he's written; 'Gone Bamboo' and' Typhoid Mary; An Urban Historical.' Both were good. I plan to look for more of his work. Read more The book was disgusting in other ways too. Bourdain is against vegetarians and frankly I am glad he hated us. Bourdain's never ending descriptions of groping and namecalling in his kitchen got on my nerves very fast. He calls a sexual abuser - one who gropes everyone in the kitchen - his best friend because he was oh, so efficient! But it appears he was more bonkers than ignoring just what many other men like to do. I'm asked a lot what the best thing about cooking for a living is. And it's this: to be a part of a subculture. To be part of a historical continuum, a secret society with its own language and customs. To enjoy the instant gratification of making something good with one's hands--using all one's senses. It can be, at times, the purest and most unselfish way of giving pleasure... While I love to be in the kitchen and think of myself as a decent cook, I still consider what goes on behind closed doors in a restaurant to be magical. After falling in love with Bourdain as a television personality, I thought I would try to deepen my connection with my burgeoning passion in the kitchen by listening to his memoir. I always loved Anthony Bourdain for his ability to "take off the gloves" when speaking about some of the industry’s best kept secrets. I honestly don’t think I would have the courage to push myself in the kitchen if it wasn’t for his sarcastic yet encouraging voice pushing me along. With his signature dry sense of humor and absolute refusal to muzzle himself, What a true delight it was to read my first Anthony Bourdain book! It was humorous, crude, exhilarating, mouth-watering, and highly informative. Oh, and I should mention, Bourdain may be a master at wielding a knife, but his skills with a pen aren’t too shabby either. I spent the past several days in his kitchens and dreaming about food and travel. (Well, I’m pretty much always fantasizing about these things, but let’s just say it became a bit of an incurable obsession of late!)