Review of Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
My 13-year-old son has become interested in reality TV shows focused on cooking. Hell’s Kitchen with Gordon Ramsay, Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, Top Chef, Is it Cake? and the like. He learned about Anthony Bourdain and asked if he could read his book, Kitchen Confidential. I bought a used copy of this NY Times bestseller, now 25 years old and read it to make sure it was appropriate for a teenage boy. Kitchen Confidential is a quick read and the back of the book describes it quicker:
Anthony Bourdain’s raw memoir exposes the wild reality of restaurant kitchens through shocking tales of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine from his 25+ years in the culinary trade.
When Kitchen Confidential was released in 2000 it surprised everyone and caught fire. I was in Europe at the time and a friend told me about it that winter in a “Dude you gotta read this!” way. I didn’t, but I understood it be a tell all of what goes on behind those swinging kitchen doors. It was a book of secrets only those in the restaurant industry lived and breathed. Things I mistakenly thought everyone already knew.
I worked in several restaurants when I was younger. The very first tax collecting job I had was in a BBQ joint called Lone Star BBQ in Gun Barrel City, TX at age 15. I started as a fry cook, dropping baskets of okra and French fries into hot peanut oil all weekend. When I wasn’t frying, I was bussing tables and sweeping up peanut shells. In college I sat smoking behind Flying Tomato Pizza waiting on my next delivery. I was a waiter at a Chinese restaurant and an Italian restaurant. Both were filthy and had all Mexican cooks. I did prep (washing and cutting vegetables) in an Indian kitchen and washed dishes. I was a short order cook at Fuller’s in Portland, Oregon for way longer than I desired. I’ve done most jobs that can be had in a professional kitchen, and I never enjoyed any of them. I knew from the beginning I wasn’t cut out for the food service industry and only took those jobs when desperate.
The people who work in the food service industry, for extended periods, are a special breed and they know it.
To be clear, my experience in the food industry was not the same as Bourdain’s. The few years I spent in low class eateries are not comparable to 25 years of chefdom in high end, NY restaurants. I can relate though and that’s why this book became so successful. Everyone who has ever worked in a professional kitchen could relate. We all knew that one Guatemalan dishwasher with a dagger tattoo on his neck or the waitress who slept with every new, cute line cook.
This book details the entire cooking career of Anthony Bourdain and the sex, drugs and rock and roll theme is over exaggerated. It’s more mundane and after 200 or so pages I found myself having to power through the last 100+. Same type of story at a different kitchen, but he’s maturing. In fact, other than a couple spots in the book I think it would be ok for a 13-year-old to read. I’m not sure it would hold his interest as Bourdain doesn’t romanticize the chef life and instead tells you straight away that it’s difficult. In fact, his story is one failure after another, restaurant hopping until he landed at Les Halles. Les Halles is a fancy Park Avenue French bistro where Bourdain settled down, wrote more than one book and eventually left to do his TV show, No Reservations.
What isn’t difficult is the way the book is written. I found myself jealous of the way the book pours out in a plain and conversational way. The book seems to fall effortlessly from Bourdain who is witty and well educated. The book is packaged well and should provide inspiration to anyone who has a story to tell.
Bourdain was the first to admit he didn’t expect anyone to care about this book. He continued to admit he wrote the book for people in the service industry. Only 6 months after the book was released, he would never cook again. Kitchen Confidential led to Bourdain becoming one of the original celebrity chefs who would travel the world and eat exotic foods. This job provided him both fortune and fame until he took his own life by hanging in a French hotel. It was too much too fast for a man whose only happiness was found in a kitchen.
It was a life well done.
