Book Review: Anthony Bourdain/Kitchen Confidential

Soooo... I am going on a vacation. A cruise. With my family. I will be out of touch with work and with email for a week. Not "Michigan" out of touch where I actually have internet access but Cruise Ship out of touch where I can buy expensive internet access by the hour and it is unreliable at best. I made the decision to be totally out of touch and as such knew i would need something to read. I was finishing a re-reading "Slaughterhouse Five"... so it goes... and had a plane to re-read Frank Herbert's Dune next. I think I was reliving my high school reading but lately it has occurred to me that I have read a lot of great books and retained very little from them so perhaps a time of re-reading was in order. Perhaps it would take the rest of my left.

As is so often the problem, Kowert screwed everything up. I caught up with he and Johnny Chico at the "The Sports Zone" in Shrewsbury and we eventually got down to my upcoming vacation and reading plans and he said "Anothony Bourdain". I had never heard of the guy and so I kept rolling the rrrrrr and saying to Johnny Chico...Anthuuuuuuuny Bourrrrrrrrrrrdain... as obnoxiously as possible. I rarely take anyone's advice "other then NPR and the New York Times Book Review". It is, after all, part of being a book snob. But Kowert went on and on abou the guy and about how he wrote like I wish I could I could write and Kowert... damn him... is very smart and sometimes.... insightful. It is important to have friends who care enough to tell you things they think you will like even when they know they will be met with sarcasm and contempt. I am, after all, an asshole.

So I hit the book store (always Borders, never Barnes and Noble) and after looking around a little found "Kitchen Confidential". I finished Vonnegutt on the plane and then started this book and started to laugh, smile, think about food, people, relationships and personal shortcomings... and was totally hooked. Now I owe Kowert. Now I know I will be returning to the states and buying all of his books, fiction and non fiction. It will be interesting to spend the next 6 weeks or so reading all of his stuff but I am hoping that it will feel like being 49 and discovering Hunter Thompson for the first time. This Bourdain guy seems like the real thing to me. I have been on the cruise ship and am still so I have not yet had time to go to the only trusted source for information...wikipdia, but he makes himself out to be a rich boy, prep school, Vassar drop out, asshole who got into cooking because his room mates insisted that he stop stealing from them and start paying rent when summering in Providence so he went to work as a dishwasher and fell in love with... the life.

And that is what the book is really all about. His love of the "the life". His successes, more about his failures, a little (very little ) regarding his heroin addiction (which he beats) and more about his addiction to...everything. The book is a study on how life throws so many things at you, and most of us (including him) mis-handle most of them. Bourdain does the fucking up in spades and seemingly without remorse. He moves from dishwasher, to the line, to culinary school (before it was cool) and then on to his misadventures in NYC restaurantdom. The copy I had was even better because it had an appendix and and afterword with Bourdain commenting on the book from his present pedestal (evidently he is the star of a very popular international travel show called "No Reservations". I have never seen it but trust me, I will be TiVo'ing upon my return to the states.

This was, without a doubt the most enjoyable read of the year. Entertaining and insightful and sometimes just brilliant, and that is NOT a term I throw around. Even as he is daily dealing with Ecuadorian fry cooks, drug addict bakers and backstabbing sous chefs he is smart and resilient and the life lessons he doles out are common sense even though he is constantly giving examples of his ownignoring of them. Show up on time, do not steal, do what you say you are going to do, when you make a mistake own up to it. There is no rocket science here but as the author gets his shit together as his career advances it reinforces the truth of all those maxims. It made me long for my time in high school and college working in a restaurant and when he talked about the allure of being on a pirate crew I knew exactly what he was talking about and the idea of being a chef, or captain of the pirates...is compelling. But not for me. He points out that it is a very hard life, requiring dedication and attention to details and foregoing any kind of "normal" life or relationships outside the kitchen.

My favorite part of the book was when he described his relationship with his "Sous Chef" at Les Halles which became his permanent career gig, It is touching because it is kind of a pirate love letter to his first mate and it is written with such love, such compassion and caring that even when he describes Stephen as someone "who could not look at a desk without rifling it's contents" he means it as a salute rather than as a criticism. It made me think of my best friends and wondering whether anyone outside of my wife (and perhaps not even her) could speak with such love of me. It was touching... at least for me. I normally do not go for non fiction and though he admits in the new afterword that his recitation of the books events has not always been remembered with such clarity by the other participants... it rings true, all the way through.

Buy this book if you like to eat out, if you like food but most of all buy it if you like to read really, really, funny, well written, insightful stuff. I know I am embarrassingly late on the bandwagon but Anthony Bourdain is the real thing. Go buy his books. DO IT NOW! Go on Amazon and order them, or at least this one. I am totally confident of my recommendation.