Kitchen Confidential
Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
By Anthony Bourdain
“Food is pain.”
Kitchen Confidential sees noted chef and TV presenter Anthony Bourdain thoroughly in his element, minus the awkwardness which sticks to him like grease on the proverbial frying pan when he has to reluctantly socialise with strangers on his various TV shows. What we had suspected to be certain antisocial leanings in the man are proved true in this book. The narrative voice will be familiar to those who’ve seen No Reservations, but the subject here is much closer to the author’s heart than anything else and no, we’re not talking about food. As much as he tries to convey his passion for good food, such as his first experience with a raw oyster as a ten-year-old on a fishing boat in France, the book is ultimately about Bourdain himself. Fortunately, the man possesses an engaging and witty style that allows you to overlook what are, in parts, completely narcissistic tangents into Bourdain’s colourful culinary past; the often sensational subject matter also helps his cause.
The book charts the famous chef’s journey from dishwasher to the grill station of a run-down seafood joint in Provincetown, Rhode Island, to becoming executive chef of one of the trendiest restaurants in Manhattan. In between, there are numerous humiliating, entertaining or enlightening pit-stops. Bourdain takes pleasure in projecting New York’s culinary industry as being propped up by a motley crew of ex-convicts and schizophrenic potheads who direct their homicidal tendencies to the beef and poultry that make it to your table. Not that Bourdain cares, as long as the result is excellent. Sensible diners, however, would likely have reservations about their main course being whipped up by hands that not too long ago were carefully cutting lines of cocaine on the kitchen table where the dessert is being prepared.
It can be difficult to reconcile the man who suggests judging the thickness of the bottom of a saucepan by bringing it down on somebody’s skull with someone who uses the word ‘patois’ much too often and gets oh-so-reverent while narrating his interactions with the legends of New York’s gourmet culture.
The book has its advantages too –it will certainly enhance your culinary vocabulary, in addition to showing you how to cast aspersions on someone’s lineage in 15 different languages. Bourdain certainly takes pleasure in revealing the underbelly of the NY restaurant business – a world of corrupt purveyors, devoted busboys, neurotic pâtissiers, merciless upper management types and generous bartenders.
But what’s more interesting (and where it diverges from being the usual chef’s memoir) is that the book covers the long journey of a dead broke and recovering drug addict who picks himself up and reaches for that perfect tuna casserole in the sky (for in spite of his culinary expertise, Bourdain keeps returning to expound on the goodness of honest, home-cooked food) and succeeds in making his impossible dreams a very palatable reality.
