book review - Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
I borrowed this book from Andy one night when I couldn't find anything to read I hadn't already read. I didn't have high expectations, having not heard of the author or the book itself before. I was pleasantly surprised. Anthony Bourdain, as an 11-year old child on holiday in France, discovered that food could 'be important. It could be an event. It had secrets'. He and his older brother were left in the car one day while his parents went to dinner, and this sparked a desire to eat food meant 'only for grown-ups'. He started eating brains, cheeses that smell like old boots, and towards the end of that summer, tried his first raw oyster, and experience he remembers better than 'losing my virginity or smoking my first joint', it was his defining moment, when he stopped being a boy.
Following his schooldays, and a period living in New England where he cut his teeth as a dishwasher in a seafood restaurant in Provincetown, Cape Cod, he commenced his education with the CIA (The Culinary Institute of America, the other CIA), where he learned what it really meant to be a chef.
The author has an almost dangerous passion for food. He is known for eating anything which is edible, from lambs testicles to whole snakes, bile, guts and all. But it's the way he describes the food he eats and prepares that makes this book special. The smells, tastes and sensations encountered when consuming food of the highest order are almost like a drug, something truly mind-altering. I am a vegetarian, but when he describes rare steaks, lambs liver, sweet breads and other 'pieces of dead animal' in such a romantic, seductive way, my mouth starts watering for bloody, stinking food that can blow my head off with a single bite. Basically, you should really have a good meal before you read the book, otherwise your mouth will be watering most of the way through it.
And the chefs. Chefs are complete nutters, psychopaths and conniving miscreants of the highest order. Mr. Bourdain freely admits to employing borderline schitzophrenics and sociopaths in his kitchens, because they and only they can make food that makes his mouth water and his tastebuds tingle. One particular example is his favoured 'Bread Man', Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown, who always had the kitchen filled with fermenting buckets of goo, sourdough starters and mould, who frequently didn't show up at all, and who had the kitchen in his pocket with under the counter dealings, schemes, plots and dodges. But it was tolerated, because Adam RLNU's bread is the absolute shit, with aromas sent from heaven and tastes like ambrosia.
Anthony Bourdain worked in the original Supperclub in New York, a palace of overwhelming decadence and dancing, food, drink and sex, a place transformed every night into something different, from luxurious banquet hall to austere minimalist, with food budgets that made a mockery of the value of money. If something was horrendously expensive, you can be sure it would be on the menu at the Supperclub, as a garnish. On the salad. A veteran of dozens of beleagured businesses, where the owners wanted to open a restaurant with whatever theme was in their head, venues doomed to fail bacause of their owners dreams and ignorance of how restaurants really worked.
If you have any interest at all in food, if you've ever eaten anything that made your tongue quiver and your nose run and your eyes water, but which was nevertheless delicious, or even if you've ever heard shouting, smashing and banging from a restaurant kitchen and wondered what was going on, then I really can't recommend this book highly enough. It's one of those 'what's-really-going-on' revelatory tomes that makes you realise there's a lot more going on behind the scenes in every walk of life than you can imagine.
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Comments
Oi! I told you about that book years ago, and offered you a read, tut-tut! Typical Verso memory!! And all kitchens are like that, for everyones info!!Full of psychos and total mad bastards!! shhh! A word for the wise: dont send anything back when its your fault that there's something wrong with it, as in "oh I forgot to say that I didnt want ...." they will spit in your food!! or worse!! Brilliant book, also "A cooks tour" and other Anthony Bourdain fiction, I have the full library, re-read a million times!!
Posted by: Babs | March 6, 2006 11:28 AM
Yeah, well, it's easier to borrow a book off someone you live with is my excuse. What happens if the chef has totally fucked up your meal and you send it back saying it's shit? Do they do worse than spit in it?
Posted by: Matt | March 6, 2006 5:57 PM
If they have fucked up then its ok, its only when you are a "stupid diner" as in, you read the menu, but manage to miss the thing you most hate is in the item you choose and then when you see it you try to lie "oh I didnt order this" / "I specifically asked for no ... in this" or the worse one I ever had was "em my soup os too hot, could you possibly cool it down for me please" needless to say that person was served cold soup, I mean are they too posh to blow on their own spoon, or what? I have a million of them, hmmm, maybe I should write a book.......
Posted by: Babs | March 7, 2006 8:36 AM
I had the kitchen in my pocket because, John Teasar was an absent tee chef that allowed tony bourdain to bullshit his way into a position that I and steven ran, mainly because tony can not cook and never wanted to as well. Read My upcoming book K2 the real tale of the belly of the beast (AKA) Anthony Bullshit Bourdain. I love You T boy, But my day will come soon, Your just a tad behind rachel ray in the credibility department! Love AdaSKI
Posted by: Adam Real Last name Unknown | April 6, 2008 12:37 PM