Bourdain

Well it took me six entries before I mentioned him but here we are. When I was fresh out of culinary school I read Kitchen Confidential. The book Anthony Bourdain wrote that he thought, “No one will read.” I have to be honest it changed my life forever. This book slanted my view on my chosen profession and made me adopt several life-long philosophies about food, cooking, and the people in the restaurant business.

Things from Kitchen Confidential that I hold/held as gospel: Chain restaurants SUCK, servers aren’t very bright, women don’t belong in a professional kitchen (unless they do pastry work), and drinking and drugs are part and parcel of the industry. Some of these things have stayed with me for my whole career up to and including my work as an instructor at a culinary school, some of them have changed and some of them have had to be abandoned entirely.

I must say that Bourdain’s show on the Travel Channel is absolutely the best show on T.V. Where else can you watch a fifty year old classically trained French bistro cook of middling ability traipse around the Amazon in search of ayahuasca a hallucinogenic tea drank by the Aztecs? Or see him eat at El Bulli the greatest restaurant in the world and actually be intimidated by the meal.

What I love most about Anthony Bourdain is his desire to show the world what restaurant work is really like. He takes you to places that restaurant people would really eat at. His view on what is good, what is great, and what is shit are like mine because he is a cook. I truly believe that once restaurants break you, become a little off, a little touched, a little crazy. To make it brief; he talks my language and although I don’t work the line sixty hours a week anymore and I am more concerned with quality of life than the quality of the fish being delivered I still think he is the most insightful food journalist/writer/T.V. personality ever.