Bourdain, Anthony. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. New York : Bloomsbury 2000. Print.
The first indication that food was something other than a substance one stuffed in one's face when hungry -- like filing up at a gas station -- came after fourth-grade elementary school. It was on a family vacation to Europe, on the Queen Mary, in the cabin-class dining room...It wa sou. It was cold. This was something oif a discovery for a curious fourth-grader whose entire experience of soup to this point had consisted of Campbell's crteam of tomato and chicken noodle.
Description:
I am someone who knows virtually nothing about cooking. My wife is a great cook, my son a professional baker of breads, but me ... not a clue. While I love eating the beautiful food both of them prepare as well as the mouth-watering offerings from friends, family, and the restaurants we go to, I in no way understand the massive amount of planning, shopping, specialized cooking, timing, plating, garnishing, and serving that goes into each food serving. While I have no desire to emulate their skills, I still have tremendous admiration for the efforts and techniques they employ to put delicious food in front of me.
But after watching the movie Tony recently, I gained new insight into the depths of professional cooking. The demands for speed, quality, cleanliness, consistency, and personal reliability are constantly hanging over the heads of chefs, line cooks, and dishwashers alike. I realized the trials our son has had in his 15 years of experience in professional kitchens, the abuse and demands he endured, and the knowledge he gathered from each location. It is sobering picture of dedication, one many would-be food providers do not survive.
Anthony Bourdain, renown chef and the subject of Tony is also the author of Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, where he details his earliest life in the kitchens of very modest restaurants. Starting as a cocky college student on vacation in Provincetown, Rhode Island and in need of money, he works as a dishwasher in a fried seafood dive. From the first day on, he learns that he actually knows nothing about food preparation, the workings of a kitchen, and the raucous, drug-abusing, highly-sexed people who work there and mercilessly bully him for his cockiness and lack of practical skills.
Humiliated by the veteran crew, he enrolls in the Culinary Institute of America for two years, resolving to gain enough skills to return to the same restaurant in Provincetown and show those mocking cooks a thing or two. A few months after being re-hired there, he and a fellow worker leave the restaurant and set up a high end catering business for wealthy party planners and business people. And thus begins his career into the world of food preparation.
He is sometimes successful, sometimes a failure in doomed restaurants, and always working with delusional owners, rowdy kitchen staff, and drugs galore. He admits he spent half his career pursuing money and drugs rather than gathering information from quality chefs and restaurant operations to perfect his skills and management techniques.
Working at the Rainbow Room at the top of Rockefeller Center, he used to sit on the windowsill, dangling his feet 65 stories above the skating rink, and help the baker toss rolls down to hit the skaters below.
Bourdain shares some of his philosophies, born from years of experience in New York City restaurants, to share with readers:
- Ultimately, I want a salute and a "Yes Sir!" If I want an opinion from my line cooks, I'll provide one.
- In most kitchens, one's freakish personal proclivities matter little if at all. Can you keep up? Are you ready for service? Can I count on you to show up at work tomorrow, to not let the side down?
- Vegetarians...are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human species, an affront to all I stand for: the pure enjoyment of food.
- Weekend diners are universally viewed with suspicion, even contempt, by both cooks and waiters alike; they're the slackjaws, the rubes, the out-of-towners, the well-done-eating,undertipping, bridge-and-tunnel pre-theatre hordes, in to see Cats or Les Miz and never to return;
A powerful, well-written memoir of the life, struggles, and triumphs of an ordinary man who decides to pursue a life in the culinary world. He's a passionate, open writer whose style I enjoyed immensely. Highly recommended for a peek into this unique world of food preparation and the variety of people who inhabit it.
[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]O'Neill, Molly. Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball
Really insightful, funny memoir from the author who learned to cook and become a world-famous chef and food author, as she grows up in a family with five athletic brothers. (Previously reviewed here.)
Happy reading.
Fred
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