Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain (2000)

For 18 months of my professional career, to this point, I've been a server. It's not an industry I'm looking to get back into, and indeed I spent the last free year of my life prior to starting law school at a restaurant. That experience is not readily relevant to my present professional hopes and dreams, but anyone that has done it knows that it changes you and makes you into a more ruthless individual (in a good way!). Like the rest of my life, I don't regret it, but I wish I had done it better at the time.

Enter Kitchen Confidential, which should be required reading for every student at every culinary school in the country, and any employee of any restaurant (that expects excellence from its staff). That may sound hyperbolic. And this book may be dated. But Anthony Bourdain did something very special here. It is the seminal, definitive book about the restaurant industry, and obviously belongs in the category of Best Books, even if it may suffer at times from literary pretentiousness. It was a pleasurable read from start to finish, and though I am no expert on the Canon, justifiably stands alongside The Art of French Cooking as a giant of its genre.  Had I read Kitchen Confidential prior to either of my serving jobs, it undoubtedly would have made me better at what I did, or at least I would have gone about it with less self-consciousness and anxiety (though one could argue these are inescapable in the situations one is generally faced with on a nearly constant basis).

The book starts off with Bourdain traveling to the south of France with his family in the 1966 and falling in love with food after having his first oyster. Ironically, this author shared a similar experience:

"August of that summer was spent in La Teste de Buch, a tiny oyster village on the Bassin d'Arachon in the Gironde (southwest France).  We stayed with my aunt, Tante Jeanne, and my uncle, Oncle Gustav, in the same red tile-roofed, white stucco house where my father had summered as a boy.  Tante Jeanne was a frumpy, bespectacled, slightly smelly old woman; Oncle Gustav, a geezer in coveralls and beret who smoked hand-rolled cigarettes until they disappeared onto the tip of his tongue.  Little had changed about La Teste in the years since my father had vacationed there.  The neighbors were still all oyster fisherman.  Their families still raised rabbits and grew tomatoes in their backyards.  Houses had two kitchens, an inside one and an outdoor 'fish kitchen.'  There was a hand pump for drinking water from a well, and an outhouse by the rear of the garden.  Lizards and snails were everywhere.  The main tourist attractions were the nearby Dune of Pyla (Europe's Largest Sand Dune!) and the nearby resort town of Arcachon, where the French flocked in unison for Les Grandes Vacances.  Television was a Big Event.  At seven o'clock, when the two national stations would come on the air, Oncle Gustav would solemnly emerge from his room with a key chained to his hip and ceremoniously unlock the cabinet doors that covered the screen." (14)  

At least the Dune de Pyla part (I've never really been able to enjoy an oyster like that).  I'm sure he wouldn't have known the town of Sainte Foye la Grande and I'm sorry I'll never be able to ask. Not that I ever would have had the opportunity. But Bourdain was cool. Actually he was a guest on the Turned Out a Punk podcast, which is one other example of his greatness. Hearing him talk about how he thought "Bodies" was a great song, or how Raw Power was an amazing album, filled me with warmth and happiness. 

***

Okay to be honest, my food service career spanned just two restaurants, and the first one could hardly be called that (Sticky Fingers, while an above-average barbecue joint, hardly qualified as good food). It was at the second that I heard about Bourdain for the first time. My colleague Mike mentioned something about him and how he was hardcore and used to do heroin. It was probably right around the time he started Parts Unknown. Much of the bad behavior detailed in this book (as emblematic of all restaurants) took place at Sticky Fingers. The second place was a bit classier and I have consequently fonder memories for it (except for the few druggies, thieves, homophobes, and power-trippers* I came across over the course of serving for a year straight).

Can we talk about homophobia? Bourdain realized that he wanted to be a chef, and began his career at a restaurant in Provincetown, MA. Later he was the chef at a Manhattan theater district pickup joint owned by a same-sex couple. There are plenty of jokes about taking it in the butt, but they are all meant to be brushed off. Even in 2000, barely a year removed from the atmosphere that gave rise to mass sexual assault at a music festival meant to symbolize peace and love, he demonstrates a compassionate attitude:

"But let's say you do suck dick, you do 'take it in the twins'; it's no impediment to survival.  No one really cares about that.  We're too busy, and too close, and we spend too much time together as an extended, dysfunctional family to care about sex, gender preference, race or national origin.  After level of skills, it's how sensitive you are to criticism and perceived insult--and how well you can give it right back--that determines your place in the food chain.  You can cover your ears all you want, pretend they're not calling you chino or morena or indio or gordo or cachundo...but they are.  Like it or not, that's your name, your street tag, whether you chose it or not.  I've been called flaco and cadavro, probably borracho.  That's just the way it is.  I call down to my prep kitchen on the intercom--calling for butter or more sauce--and that little gangster who keeps my stock rotated and makes that lovely chiffonaded parsley for me is going to reply (after I'm out of hearing), 'Fuuck YOUU!!' before giving me exactly what I asked for.  Better I say it first: 'Gimme my fucking mantequilla and sauce, motherfucker.  Ahorita...and...fuuuck YOU!'  And I love that little thug, too--the headband-sporting, baggy-pansted, top button buttoned, bottom button open, moon boot-shod, half Puerto Rican, half cholo vato loco, with his crude prison-style tats and his butterfly knife tucked in his wristband.  I have, on many occasions, pondered adopting him.  He's everything I'd want in a son." (221-222)

But you do not come to this book for the views on humanity. You come for the food. And while you may not find recipes, you will likely learn a lot of basic things about cooking and preparing food. The chapter on tools of the trade, and the items that any amateur chef should stock in their kitchen ("How to Cook Like the Pros"), will be worthwhile for anyone that has a desire to cook. It may also make you want to try to make certain dishes (such as when he asks Scott Bryan about his go-to late night drunk meal - beef bourguinon).

The writing itself is uneven. He would wake up at 5 am and smoke cigarettes and write for an hour or two before starting his legendarily long days in the kitchen. Sometimes the chapters feel sort of randomized, like an album with a bunch of songs that don't necessarily complement one another. There are callbacks, for sure, but there are also outliers like the long-winded story that is the chapter "What I Know about Meat." In any case, it's a no-brainer to add this to the Best Books list. Just thinking about him overusing the term "rube" or talking about "eating crow" makes me want to smile. 

Unfortunately, we have to be a big downer and talk about suicide because wow, does the dark humor in this book take a turn. Addicts, artists, writers, chefs, punks--each is predisposed towards depression/suicidal tendencies and Bourdain was one and all of them. And there are chilling moments that can cut one dead:

"I was utterly depressed.  I lay in bed all day, immobilized by guilt, fear, shame and regret, my ashtrays overflowing with butts, unpaid bills stacked everywhere, dirty clothes heaped in the corners.  At night, I lay awake with heart palpitations, terrors, bouts of self-loathing so powerful that only the thought of diving through my sixth-floor window onto Riverside Drive gave me any comfort and allowed me to lull myself into a resigned sleep." (154-155)

Am I the only one that has often felt the same way? There is peace in contemplating one's own tragic demise, to shame all that made a good thing bad. One cannot know for sure the impetus behind such gestures and we will not engage in hypotheses in this review. Suffice to say, he had that personality type. And there is nothing wrong with it. 

I could write a lot more about this book.  There's something noteworthy to excerpt or discuss every few pages.  Most of the comments to be made could center around banalities such as "I knew a guy just like that!" or "Isn't that story insane?" So we should resist the urge to give our own little personal take on Bourdain any longer, here at least, and end with a few his words about regret:

"I often use the hypothetical out-of control ice-cream truck.  What would happen if you were walking across the street and were suddenly hit by a careening Mister Softee truck?  As you lie there, in your last few moments of consciousness, what kind of final regrets flush through your mind?  'I should have had a last cigarette!' might be one.  Or, 'I should have dropped acid with everybody else back in '74!'  Maybe: 'I should have done the hostess after all!'  Something along the lines of: 'I should have had more fun in my life!  I should have relaxed a little more, enjoyed myself a little more...'
That was never my problem.  When they're yanking a fender out of my chest cavity, I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time.  My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered.
I'm still here.  And I'm surprised by that.  Every day." (267-268)

Sadly that last part is no longer true, and the world is a little less comforting because of it.  Yet none of us will last forever, and while we may lament not getting to see the work Bourdain might have done over the next ten or fifteen years, or ever getting to meet him, he bestowed gifts onto the world that can be binged, consumed and dissected for years to come.  One should be rightly astounded (perhaps intimidated) by his body of published work.  Few could hope to reach the artistic heights he did while essentially retaining a popular appeal.  The great gift of this book is that part of him can always be with us, and we can look to it for guidance when faced with a difficult choice: what would Anthony do?  He would likely tell you specifically not to listen to his advice.  He would also likely do something great.