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Kitchen Confidential: Insider's Edition

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Other parts will disgust you and leave you nauseous. You will never look a restaurant food the same way - and may not want to eat it at all unless you get a good look at the kitchen and the people preparing the food. I had Kitchen Confidential for quite a while lying in my e-reader and I thought it was about time I read it. I wish I hadn't now! I had thought a book about food can never possibly be so boring and disgusting. But Anthony Bourdain's personality permeates throughout the book and put me off completely. Bourdain’s death is indeed a truly tragic one, and I was deeply sad and moved when I found out about it in 2018. From the time of writing of Kitchen Confidential, and before, to 2018, a year of his death, Bourdain continued to struggle with his mental health. He often brought out death, and in one of his last interviews, he said that he was going to “die in the saddle” — a sentiment that later proved chilling. His statements, as well some passages of the book proved how desperately he needed help. So it is somewhat puzzling that his loved ones expressed their disbelief after the event, with his mother saying he was “absolutely the last person in the world I would have ever dreamed would do something like this.”

Bourdain doesn't pull any punches talking about the life of the kitchen staff fueled by drugs, alcohol, sexual innuendo, sarcasm, anger, impatience, and tyranny. Some how, as a result, schedules are met, food is delivered, and customers are satisfied. Food prep is a lifestyle that can occupy the serious chef 24/7. It is something I will not take for granted in the future.

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.

Bourdain enters a lengthy period of unemployment, as his reputation and the mistakes he makes in interviews leave him unemployable. Pino Luongo, the owner of La Mardi, gives Bourdain a break, offering him the role of executive chef at another of his restaurants. Although Bourdain eventually leaves under a cloud, his career has been re-established.Bourdain explains how a commercial restaurant kitchen works, using his own relationships with the people he works with to illustrate the carefully coordinated tasks and roles that each member of the staff performs. This extends to people outside the kitchen, as Bourdain offers an overall view of the restaurant business, displaying a mastery of the whole enterprise. He asserts that being a chef is essentially masochistic, and only people with an obsession with cooking have a chance at being successful in what, in many ways, is a perverse business.

Published in 2000, Kitchen Confidential mostly revealed his wild streak. During his early years, his behavior and speech reflected somebody who didn't care whether he was liked. Bourdain reeked of privilege that was topped off by an expletive-laced attitude coming from a drug-addicted snob. One thing can be presumed from that, of all relationships in life, the relationship he had with food was one of the most important, if not the most important relationship he had.Hiding in the final third of Kitchen Confidential, the travelogue “Mission to Tokyo” quietly represents the full flourishing of Bourdain’s gifts while subtly implying a shift in destiny. Sent to Japan to consult on the opening of a Tokyo-based branch of Les Halles, he proceeds to render the experience in all of its jet-lagged, native-terrified, migraine-experiencing, drunk-on-novelty-and-alcohol mania appropriate to the occasion. It’s mesmerizing. One of my feelings was constant, that by telling the macho stories Bourdain tried to hide the depth of his psychological suffering that became painfully evident in only a few, but terrifying passages. Bourdain definitely crushes all preconceived notions we might have about the industry. You remember those foul-mouthed, unkempt, ever-fired-and-hired kitchen workers with shifty pasts you've come across at some points in your life? I thought I simply had a misfortune of working in crappy places, but, apparently, all cooks are exactly like that! There is no such thing as a sophisticated cook, according to Bourdain. In his book, cooks are a dysfunctional lot - drug-addicted, unable to hold a "normal" job, people from the fringes of the society. Actually, Bourdain is one of these people himself. He supports this statement by numerous stories of his drug-, crime- and sex-infused culinary career. As for artistry in cooking, there is none. Cooking is all about mindless, unvarying repetition. Only a few executive chefs in high-end restaurants have a luxury of being creative with the food they make. Having just listened to Marco Pierre White's autobiography, I decided again to return to Bourdain's tales of life as a Chef, my fourth reading now, and still as good as first time around. It was so wonderful to hear his brilliant narration, too, a voice to remember. A voice filled with his love of life, his life and all it's imperfections, the people he'd worked with, be they good, bad or quirky. So full of humour and the enjoyment of discovery. How different from the coldness and self obsession of White.

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. Whilst reading it nearly four years later, I thought often about articles, particularly from the Guardian, about how restaurant kitchen culture is changing, especially but not only since #metoo ... I'm assuming that, because it's the Guardian, that the change is very patchy indeed and probably with younger teams in urban areas. (Having, before this year, spent so much time at home ill and on the internet, I used to overestimate the impact Very Online social justice culture had in the real world in general, and am now seeing the difference, between internet and reality, especially in middle-aged centre-left people. I'd assume it's no different in kitchens, and change is probably slower if anything.) Saying that, though, Bourdain admits in Kitchen Confidential that not all chef contemporaries of his were as wild and aggressive as his team. No one understands the American Dream of hard work leading to material rewards more than a non-American,” Bourdain writes. “The Mexican, Dominican, and Salvadorian cooks I’ve worked with over the years make most CIA-educated [Culinary Institute of America] white boys look like clumsy, sniveling little punks.” There is little doubt that Bourdain understood that the “CIA-educated white boys” epithet applied to himself. 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. The audio version is read by Bourdain, which may be the most problematic aspect for me. In the first couple of chapters, Bourdain discusses his introduction to the world of cooking, followed by his experiences at the Culinary Institute of America and his forays into the cooking world after. I'm stalled out on recommendations for the home chef chapter, which I'd kind of like to finish. Here's the trouble: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).” I liked this book but didn't love it. I loved that he reads the audiobook, because hearing his inflection and emphasis made me know when he was being serious and when he was being sarcastic. Some parts of this book are eye-opening and interesting, you definitely won't look at a restaurant or its food the same way again. Yet other parts of the book get really tedious, going through endless names of people and different restaurants kind of made me glaze over. I am not familiar with any of these people or places, so those parts didn't connect with me.

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