- working in the culinary field advice and stories.
Most diners believe that their sublime sliver of seared foie
gras, topped with an ethereal buckwheat blini and a drizzle of
piquant huckleberry sauce, was created by a culinary artist of
the highest order, a sensitive, highly refined executive chef.
The truth is more brutal. More likely, writes Anthony Bourdain in
Kitchen Confidential, that elegant three-star concoction is the
collaborative effort of a team of "wacked-out moral degenerates,
dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak
thieves, sluts, and psychopaths," in all likelihood pierced or
tattooed and incapable of uttering a sentence without an
expletive or a foreign phrase. Such is the muscular view of the
culinary trenches from one who's been groveling in them, with
obvious sadomasochistic pleasure, for more than 20 years.
CIA-trained Bourdain, currently the executive chef of the
celebrated Les Halles, wrote two culinary mysteries before his
first (and infamous) New Yorker essay launched this frank
confessional about the lusty and larcenous real lives of cooks
and restaurateurs. He is obscenely eloquent, unapologetically
opinionated, and a damn fine storyteller--a Jack Kerouac of the
kitchen. Those without the stomach for this kind of joyride
should note his opening caveat: "There will be horror stories.
Heavy drinking, drugs, screwing in the dry-goods area,
unappetizing industry-wide practices. Talking about why you
probably shouldn't order fish on a Monday, why those who favor
well-done get the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel, and
why seafood frittata is not a wise brunch selection.... But I'm
simply not going to deceive anybody about the life as I've seen
it." --Sumi Hahn
