Jeez, I'm so backed up. I just finished book 46, so that's three more to write about after this one...not to mention six more to read and write about...
Kitchen Confidential is Anthony Bourdain's autobiographical look at the life of a professional chef in the (mostly) New York restaurant business. Bourdain starts with his childhood experience on a transatlantic ocean liner, where he gets his first taste of vichyssoise, and starts to understand the experiential nature of good food. Once he arrives at his destination, France, he is still reluctant to be adventurous, ignoring the French dining experience for the most part and sticking to hamburgers and fries, until one day his parents make him and his brother wait in the car while they enjoy one of the finest restaurants in France. Feeling left out of what he believes would have been another vichyssoise-type experience, it is then that he starts on the path that he is well-known for: trying anything edible, no matter how strange it might seem. He discovers his love of food, and when he grows older, after knocking around at Vassar for a short while, he drops out and goes to Cape Cod, where he gets his first taste of the restaurant business. Starting as a lowly dishwasher, he soon graduates to food preparation and working the line. He eventually attends the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), and when he's done he manages to land a job at New York's famous Rainbow Room. Here he "makes his bones," learning to handle a high-volume and high-stress kitchen.
Bourdain tells it like it is, or at least like it was for him. He paints the early kitchen crews as merry pirate bands, looting and pillaging and taking no prisoners. They are pits of anarchy, full of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Is that steak not done yet and the rest of the food is ready? Throw it in the Fryolator! Cut your finger? Wrap a towel around it and keep working! Need to grab something out of the oven, and no towel handy? Use your bare hand! Bourdain's kitchens, for the most part, are drug-fueled pressure cookers, brimming with stress and yelling and swearing and sexism. He berates vendors, gathers intelligence on employees, and poaches staff from other restaurants. He speaks distainfully of the types of failed restaurant owners, and boasts of his ability to spot the warning signs of a failing restaurant.
Then, deliberately contradicting himself, he presents the kitchen of Scott Bryan, the head chef of Veritas. Bryan's kitchen is the antithesis of almost everything Bourdain has described. Everyone is in pristine whites. The kitchen is busy, but there is no yelling, swearing or male posturing. Each dish is carefully constructed from scratch and beautifully plated. The owner is a perfect example of one of Bourdain's failed restaurant owner types - someone who didn't know the business prior to getting into it - but he is highly successful and runs a tight ship.
The book is very entertaining, even if Bourdain comes across as arrogant at times. He is a good storyteller, and the stories he tells make for good reading. You can see his passion for food in his writing, and while he might not be the greatest chef in the world, it's clear that he is passionate about what he does. Plus, it's fun to hear him slam Emeril LaGasse and Bobby Flay, two of the food networks first big stars, even if it seems like sour grapes for achieving greater celebrity than he did. If you have ever worked in a restaurant, or if you are a restaurant customer who's always wondered what goes on in the back of the house, you will get a kick out of this book.
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