I am finally reading “Kitchen Confidential” after wanting to since before it came out. What a hoot! Tony Bourdain is a natural writer, with a wonderfully skewed view of the world and a great sense of humor. I think anyone would enjoy this book (as evidenced by its bestsellerdom), but if you are a foodie, you absolutely must read it. It is fascinating and it has given me a whole new respect for those who cook for a living.
I’m also getting a big kick out of “A Cook’s Tour” on the Food network. If you aren’t familiar, it’s Tony Bourdain on a trip around the world, searching for new food sensations. It’s fascinating, and he’s a terrific tour guide (not to mention totally cute). He is also game for anything: this last show had him in Vietnam, happily swallowing the still beating heart of a cobra. Followed by a deep-fried giant tree grub for dessert…yeah, baby!
If you are any kind of foodie, you have to check out both. (There is also “A Cook’s Tour” book, which I haven’t read yet).
I thought the book “Kitchen Confidential”'s first 2/3ds was excellent! (The last 1/3d dribbled off).
I loved the book of “A Cook’s Tour”, with one caveat (who’s idiot idea was it to present the chapters out of order?!) and thought it a much stronger book than the first.
I’ve only seen one episode of the show and liked it a lot.
But, really. Did anyone think I wouldn’t like someone who in print calls Emeril (something like) ‘a gibbering buffoonish ape’ (not exactly those words, but close) and excoriates Bobby “My feet are clean enough to eat on. That’s why I’m standing on the cooking surface” Flay (boo! hiss!)
I, as usual, agree with Fenris. I thought Cooks’ Tour was a better, more mature book. After Kitchen Confidential, I went out and got myself a eighty-dollar Global knife, and now have a nice knife callus exactly as described, in addition to some nice grease burns on my wrists. I also started garnishing and giving more thought to sauces.
And after I finished Kitchen Confidential, my lovely wife gave me an autographed copy of Cook’s Tour for Christmas.
He was recently interviewed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and he really teed off on Emeril and Bobby Flay. I’m not quite as down on Emeril as he is (his show’s much easier to take if you think of it as entertainment than actual cooking), and I fully agree with his assessment of Bobby Flay (which is exactly what I’d like to do to him).
However, he also took a shot at Alton Brown, and for that, HE MUST DIE!!!
And I spent the whole of last week making demi glace from last Sunday’s roast chicken. Fantastic book.
I’d just finished reading it about 3 weeks ago when I heard that my SO’s friend (whose SO, coincidentally, is a chef) had driven “this American chef author bloke” to Dublin airport… It was Mr. Bourdin. Damn! I’d have liked to have met him. Saw him interviewed on British TV the other day, and he doesn’t come over half as arrogant as you might expect from reading KC.
I also heard the new one serialised on BBC radio, and it was quite entertaining, though it’s been panned by the critics over this side of the Atlantic.
I’m just now into the last 1/3rd of the book now, Fenris, I’ll have to tell you if I agree with your assessment.
I’m glad to hear about “Cook’s Tour” - I’ll have to get it. I’m loving the show.
And is there a link to the interview you read, ** 3waygeek? **
By the way, if you want to get into sauces, get “Sauces” by James Peterson. I just got it (Free, too… joined “The Good Cook”) and it is truly amazing. But I’ve always been a little stuck when it came to sauce, but not anymore.
Of course, that assumes I’ll put in the massive work involved… yeesh.
I don’t have the book handy (my sister now has my copy) but my recollection was that he in fact wasn’t all that happy about the cobra heart. In fact, a fair portion of the book is about how miserable it was doing the TV series, as his cameramen & producers keep on forcing him to eat things that look more thrilling on camera than they actually taste. (There’s a hilarious section about them forcing him to eat a disgusting, undercooked iguana, an ancient creature who happens to be the hotel mascot.)
A Cook’s Tour is OK, if a bit uneven. It does have an unforgivably idiotic rant about vegetarianism in there (why am I not surprised his tour pointedly avoids countries like India & China with long traditions of vegetarian cuisine?), & he’s sometimes stuck for coming up with new ways of saying “it tasted great!”, but it’s nonetheless mostly up to snuff.
I enjoyed Kitchen Confidential and am about halfway through Cook’s Tour. I too wonder why the second book, in terms of his travels, is out of order. But Bourdain is a natural storyteller; each new chapter gives the reader a “You Are There” feeling. (I think I’d rather read about eating duck embryos than have the experience.)
I was a bit crestfallen to be told, in the first book, to throw away my garlic press. Guess I’ll never be a genuine foodie.
I don’t know if there have been other threads about this, but, for people that enjoy Bourdain’s books, I STRONGLY recommend Micheal Ruhlman’s “The Making of A Chef”, and “The Soul of a Chef”. The first is a memoir of training at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York (written by a man with no previous cooking experience). The second is a series of 3 vignettes: writing about the nerve wracking master chef exam, and two detailed pieces about two famous U.S. restaurants: Lola in Cleveland (!) and the French Laundry in SoCal.
The author brings vibrantly to life the excitement, passion, and artfulness of professional cookery. Reading the first book was enough to make me want to drop everything, move to upstate NY, and enrol. (The only thing holding me back was the US$100k tuition and the thought of never seeing my wife and daughter again…)
I’ll agree it was idiotic (I’ve had wonderful Vegetarian food) but…it was hysterical. The bit where he was talking about how he’d been invited to a vegan meal and he was wondering if, given all the vegetarian bashing he’s done in his career, it would be safe to go. He concludes that (paraphrased) “what the heck. They get so little protein in their diet that they probably couldn’t
work up the energy to be violent.”
Totally inaccurate, but funny in the same way that Cecil’s: “If ignorance was corn-flakes, you’d be General Mills” line is inaccurate but funny.
While I thought it was very entertaining, I also thought that Kitchen Confidential just trailed off at the end. The beginning is relatively cohesive chapter to chapter, but it then becomes more like a compilation of assorted magazine articles. Good magazine articles, but still…
You apparently haven’t read the book all that carefully. As a professional cook, I thought KC to be entertaining in some parts, insulting in others, and dragging at the end. I have to agree with Haardvark, if you liked KC, read Michale Rhuleman’s The Soul of a Chef. It was nothing short of inspiring.
Ack! Not me! My reading of KC leads me to the conclusion that while it has its charms, especially for adrenalin junkies, the work is much, much too hard. His chapter “A Day in the Life”? 5:55 am to midnight? 6 days a week? He says he adores his wife… I question whether he even KNOWS his wife. (Does anyone know if she accompanied him on his world tour? I certainly hope so!)
I confess that I am by nature a lazy soul, but even if I weren’t, that kind of schedule is just depressing to me. There isn’t anything I like to do enough to do it 18/6.
Unfortunately, the hours are truth, especially if you’re either a sous or executive chef in a high-volume restaurant. I couldn’t even wager a guess how many hours I worked before blowing out my back!
If I remember correctly, he mentions his wife in A Cook’s Tour accompanying him during most of his travels…
A) I agree with the part I snipped about how I now have no desire to ever be a professional cook!
B) No, his wife didn’t go with him. I don’t remember why. His wife gets very little play, but she has one line that steals the book, early on and implies that she’s a pretty cool woman.
He tells her what he’s planning and how he’s gonna try every weird, exotic dish he can get his hands on.
She replies (approximately): “Almost any dish. Y’know that Chinese dish where they cut the top of the monkey’s head off, and you eat the brains while the monkey’s still alive? I find out you’ve done that, you get the divorce papers the next morning.”
Just to clarify: I don’t mind the (wrong, but indeed funny) generalization that because he had an awful meal by a bunch of self-proclaimed gourmet vegan chefs, all vegetarian chefs are frauds. (I should though add here, that despite his outrage elsewhere in the book over the incursions of vegetarianism & the like in the U.K., in fact one of the best meals I’ve ever had in England was at a small vegetarian restaurant opposite King’s College, Cambridge, called the King’s Pantry. & I’m not a vegetarian.) What pushes the rant into the realms of the offensive & stupid is the selfrighteousness with which he claims that his whirlwind culinary tourism has given him the insight that vegetarians are a bunch of rabid, pampered nutcases from well-off people on the west coast of the United States who would like to yank meat from the mouths of the starving millions the world over. This comes at a key moment in the book–it’s near the end, & it makes it look like instead of his learning anything about the diversity of other cultures & feeling a little humble or tolerant, he’s learned nothing. As I said, he is so selfabsorbed he’s not even noticed that a large portion of the world’s population is Buddhist.
I must say that I wasn’t all that grossed out by the revelations in Kitchen Confidential–it made me newly appreciative of what goes into the making of my food at a restaurant, mainly–, but it certainly made it clear that I wouldn’t want to be a chef: the best chapter is surely simply the day in the life account near the end, where the amount of continual stress & aspirin-popping is astonishing to read about. Bourdain does also somehow find the time to read & write fiction, as well as do some research for Typhoid Mary: god knows where he finds the time or energy.
Well, his energy doesn’t surprise me that much. Considering how amazingly skinny he is, and how much he relishes eating, he’s obviously got a metabolism set on “Nuke”, which implies that he’s a pretty high-energy guy. At least, that’s what I’ve observed in my good friends who are big eaters, yet thin. They are also super high energy. To the point of discomfort, really, with major sleep problems, a sort of “wired” feeling most of the time.
I’m definitely going to have to read the second book.
I just had to resurrect this thread. I’m reading Kitchen Confidential, and am about 2/3 of the way through (according to Fenris it’s about to trail off…) I’m totally in love with this book. Mr. Elf bought it for me for my birthday because we both enjoy A Cook’s Tour on Food Network so much - it makes staying in every Friday night not seem so bad.
I’m so excited to hear that there’s a Cooks Tour book, too.
I have a question - It seemed like when Bourdain was in P-town setting up his catering business with Dimitri, he kept alluding to the fact that they would eventually take their catering to New York and fail. Did I miss something? I’ve just finished reading about the failure of their first venture together in New York, but I don’t think he ever got back to finishing the bit about the catering. Thoughts?
Fantastic book.