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. Restaurants garnish their food. Why shouldn't you? Dip the sprigs in cold water, shake off excess, allow to dry for a few minutes, and slice the stuff, as thinly as you can, with that sexy new chef's knife. One thing is certain, I’m definitely on the right side of the kitchen – in the dining room! There’s no way I could cope working in this sort of an environment. The hours, the pace, the chaos, the pressure! But I admire anyone that can do it – and like Bourdain, I can see his point that “line cooks are the heroes.” I’m a firm believer now. Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water while your belly aches with laughter. You'll beg the chef for more, please.

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. However, nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, neither his viral New Yorker article nor "Kitchen Confidential" were his first run-ins with editors and publishers. According to the New York Post, Bourdain's mother, Gladys Bourdain, was a copy editor at The New York Times and recognized his writing talent early. And a fellow chef, Scott Bryan, told the New York Post that "Tony saw himself as more of a writer than a chef." But even during his so-called "wilderness" years, his love of food led to an atypical perspective on race and kitchen people, his tribe. In 2005, the book was adapted into a television show of the same name, starring Bradley Cooper as a fictionalized Bourdain. The series was cancelled partway into its first season, and only 13 episodes were produced. [6] Subsequent work [ edit ]Four and a half stars, rounded down because I know a few of those chapters are old articles Bourdain wrote for various publications, and I think the book would hold itself together better if it had been a more continuous narrative. But I will be looking up his other books and scour Netflix for his shows. Reading this only now, in 2021, you could say I missed that gourmet meal when it was piping hot. The timing turns out perfect for that documentary that just came out, however, and I’ll try to watch Road Runner within the next few days. This wasn’t planned, believe it or not. 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.

I have long been a Bourdain fan, we watched all of his shows and his enjoyment of food and travel has encouraged us more than once to get out of our comfort zones and to embrace new and unique experiences. I was devastated when I heard news of his suicide, I feel like the world is a bit less bright without him in it.I confess I'm a full-blown foodie. I love trying new restaurants, finding new things to eat that I've never had before. That moment, when you take the first bite of a never-before-tried dish and realize you've found a new favorite, it's one of the best feelings in the world. And Anthony Bourdain passionately embodied that. To read about his early days is an honor, and I'm glad I finally got around to it. I first heard of author, Anthony Bourdain, in a review discussion of his exposé of behind the scenes restaurant life on BBC Radio Four over twenty years ago. Two days later I bought and read Kitchen Confidential, and was totally blown away. I bought copies for family members, bored anyone who'd listen with excerpts and advice from the book, then started on a succession of other cook's tales, but none was as funny, scary, evocative as that by Bourdain. He remained an hero throughout the years to come. His recent, sad departure from this world prompted me to read the book again but this time literally in his own voice as he is also the narrator. And if I thought it breathtaking before, well, he really has to be heard to be believed. In a recent phone conversation, GQ food writer Brett Martin, who also authored the excellent 2013 survey of the early days of prestige television Difficult Men, reflects on this through the lens of two decades of hindsight: “I think people forget, in the sanctification that’s followed Bourdain’s death, that his persona early on was really sort of an asshole, shot through with this adolescent, faux-gonzo narcissism. He and [creator of The Wire] David Simon shared that weakness. But they also shared a clarity of vision and this jubilance and brilliance.”