BOOKS: Kitchen Confidential

For some ridiculous reason, I had somehow managed to not really know who Anthony Bourdain was until after his death. The outpouring of praise in response to his tragic end finally motivated me to see what I’d been missing, so I picked up his first big book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. I’m way late to join the chorus, but I will heartily join the voices of praise. As promised, the book is an eye-opening tour of the “back of house” of the restaurant business, giving me a whole new appreciation for what goes on back there. We think of chefs as being all about the culinary creativity, but that’s just a small part of the job, which includes marshalling supplies of food and tools from a network of suppliers of varying scrupulousness and reliability, managing a staff mostly comprised of miscreants and undocumented immigrants, and playing HR, confidant, and motivator to get them to produce a consistent high quality product at intense volume. His description of the pre-theatre dinner rush at a Times Square eatery will make you appreciate a chef not just as a food artist, but also like Omar Bradley planning and executing the landing at Utah Beach. His description of the colorful characters that inhabit the kitchen, and the choreography that somehow emerges from barely controlled mayhem, will make you want to peek behind the kitchen door, but will also make you very afraid to get too close. Bourdain has the rare gift of writing like he talks (and bonus: he reads his own audiobook), and the book is not only a window on the restaurant world, but also a window on this extraordinary man. He is impressed with his own talents, sometimes self-confessedly beyond justification, but he has a deep respect for his craft, and is quick to take his hat off to his peers and superiors. He desires to do a good job for its own sake, and gives restaurant owners their due if not always respect, but he’s fiercely loyal to his employees. His prose is vivid, and I enjoyed the journey from Bourdain as a boy in France tasting his first oyster to the seasoned chef making his first explorations of the Tokyo food scene, or just the chef examining his own hands, their scars, and the stories they tell. I’m sorry I didn’t know him sooner. I miss him already.