The Nitty Gritty Of Chefdom, NYC.
Written: Jul 10 '04 (Updated Aug 16 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Strong narrative voice; raw insight into the urban culinary culture.
Cons: Raunchy tone; non-fiction/fiction issue; he beats reader over head with his point/s.
The Bottom Line: Can you handle the hardcore truth about what goes on behind the scenes when you eat out? Yes? Then read this book.
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| jessicamartin's Full Review: Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential: Adventure... |
Are you one of those people (like myself) who find voyeuristic pleasure in learning the down and dirty about different subcultures of the world, in this case the world of professional cooking? If so, then this is certainly a book you would enjoy. However I must state as a disclaimer that Bourdain’s recounting of his life in his memoir Kitchen Confidential is often times raunchy, drug-induced, lewd, and more times than not, offensive. Why would someone choose to read such incendiary words, you ask? Because although Bourdain is certainly over-the-top in his descriptions of his culinary mis-adventures and eventual rise to culinary success, at the same time he does not mince his words and he tells his truth, exaggerated or not. Although I often found myself gasping in shock (the chef actually screwed the bride during her wedding reception out back by the dumpsters?), reading Kitchen Confidential is like rubber necking as sirens whirl along the side of the road. There is a morbid curiosity in people to know the cold hard truth, no matter how knarly that truth may be.
The book journeys with Bourdain through his first discovery that food has power, while he was traveling with his parents in France when he was just a young tot and he tasted his first oyster, an experience which he proclaims was a rites of passage of sorts, “…in the proudest moment in my personal history, that one moment still more alive for me than so many other ‘firsts’ that followed – first pu**y, first joint, first day in high school, first published book or any other thing – I attained glory.”
In college at Vassar, Bourdain floundered around and “treated the world as [his] ashtray...[he] was...a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good a**kicking..." One summer break from Vassar, he went up to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he scored his first job in a kitchen, at the bottom rung as a dishwasher. His first restaurant experience in P-town opened up the culinary industry to him.
From P-town, Bourdain tells funny anecdotes about training at the CIA (the Culinary Institute of America) where in meat class, his “meat instructor would make hand puppets out of veal breast. And his lamb demo sexual puppet show was legendary." The reader also learns of Bourdain’s mentorship into the industry from a fellow he calls “Bigfoot.” We learn about his slave-laborish experience working at the world famous Rainbow Room. We hear him make fun of his loyal friends in the industry while in the same breath praising them. Of his favorite “psychotic bread baker” who Bourdain has worked with over the years, he says that on a bad day he pictures this man who he calls “Adam-Real-Last-Name-Unknown” to have “eyes two different sizes after a thirty-six-hour coke and liquor jag, white crust accumulated at the corners of his mouth, a two-day growth of whiskers- standing there in a shirt and no pants amongst the porno mags, the empty Chinese takeout containers, as the Spice Channel flickers silently on the TV, throwing blue light on a can of Dinty Moore beef stew by an unmade bed...” Yet a few paragraphs later, Bourdain calls Adam-Real-Last-Name-Unknown's bread pure “magic” and that “he’s the best at what he does…[baking] the finest bread I’ve ever had.”
There is an invaluable chapter to chefs and diners alike titled “From Our Kitchen To Your Table” which tells readers why you do not necessarily want to order the evening’s fish special on a Monday evening; why you should be wary of eating mussels; why you should judge a restaurant by its bathroom; and why you should be cautious of eating any seafood served at the Sunday buffet.
There is another very vital chapter in the book titled, "The Life of Bryan," where Bourdain thankfully tells his readers that his way of running a “noisy, debauched, and overloaded with faux testosterone” kitchen with a “pirate crew” is not the only way to run a kitchen, and that his colleague Scott Bryan is a case in point. This chapter is vital for the book so that it does not give the wrong impression to its readers, that Bourdain's way is THE way a kitchen is run. “The Life of Brian” chapter (clever Monte Python pun duly noted) shows Bourdain getting a birds eye view into a kitchen where “…during the middle of the rush on a Friday night, with a full dining room, the pace was positively relaxed – more a seriously focused waltz than the kind of hard-checking mosh-pit slamdancing I live with.”
Strangely, Kitchen Confidential is listed in the Library of Congress as a non-fiction title, yet in the beginning of the book it states that “I have changed the names of some of the individuals and some of the restaurants that are part of my story.” Sure, I understand why Bourdain did not want to disclose the actual name of the mafia boss he worked for nor of the people whom he does not speak very highly. Yet how can a publisher (in this case Harper Collins) justify categorizing the book non-fiction when the author clearly states that names of certain people and restaurants have been changed? This perplexes me.
By the end, the novelty of his brash tone wore off severely, to the point where I became mildly annoyed with him repeating how the people he works with in the kitchen are a “dysfunctional, mercenary lot, fringe-dwellers [who are] motivated by money, the peculiar lifestyle of cooking and a grim pride…” Mr. Bourdain belabors his points throughout the book in his relentless tone of sarcastic and dramatic overstatement, to the point where I found myself bored by the repetitiveness of his writing style.
Kitchen Confidential is a reading MUST for anyone in culinary school or anyone even considering being a chef. As for the rest of us, if you can stomach his tone and harsh abrasive language, then it is a very interesting peek into the knarly culinary life of fast-paced and cut-throat NYC.
(c) Jessica Martin 2004
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jessicamartin
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Member: Jessica Martin
Location: USA
Reviews written: 32
Trusted by: 12 members
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It takes a great deal of courage to be who you really are.
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