Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
- Planted:
- Last watered:
I read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.
The book is interesting enough despite Bourdain being unlikable. I didn’t like him most of the time while reading, at least. He’s opinionated and sure of himself and vulgar, and he glamorizes toxic behavior. I’m an outsider to his world, and that might be just the reaction he expects, but I can only imagine many insiders would be even more appalled. He’s completely offensive and unapologetic. Unsavory would be a good way of saying it without me sounding too coddled.
For example, on page 126 he tells a story of him and two reckless drug addict friends taking a prank way too far on their manager, then he acts like the manager couldn’t hang when he quit. He goes on to say the restaurant failed because they weren’t good chefs yet—not because they ran a toxic, chaotic kitchen. I don’t want to be too callous. Maybe he changed tune later in life and was still egotistical and delusional when he wrote this. I know he committed suicide, and that’s a terrible thing.
Or maybe it’s a strategic writing angle where his younger self character is implied to be short-sighted, naive, whatever. But that’s giving him the benefit of the doubt. His “Baltimore sucks” monologue on page 136 is just so closed-minded and and immature. I realize that he may be poking and prodding the reader, so maybe provocation was his goal to publish a bestseller. An angry reader is more likely to continue than a bored reader.
On page 256, he finally acknowledges that his accounts of working in kitchens are anecdotal and not representative of all kitchens. Idk why he had to keep up the charade for the first 255 pages acting like his cherished debauchery was the norm. In the whole chapter about Scott Bryan, where Bourdain admits he was wrong about so much he acted so sure about in the first half of the book, he is actually likable. And he’s a good writer! I enjoy his writing. So that chapter was kind of redeeming, but like, why wait to do that? Why frustrate the reader for most of the book with unsavory stories and casual toxicity?
On vegetarians and vegans
He’s a total meanie about vegetarians and vegans (page 70). Without taking it personally, it is pretty funny. Just closed-minded.
Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein.
On artists versus craftspeople
He makes an interesting distinction between artists and craftspeople on page 62. Using his terms, a software engineer at a bigger company may be a craftsman (or a soldier, a good employee) whereas a solo engineer (or one on a small team, if the culture allows) might be an artist going on side quests, experimenting. Or it’s the same person who’s a craftswoman in her day job and an artist on her weekend side projects. He makes a value judgement—liking craftsmen and having contempt for artists—whereas I see it more as craftspeople and artists having to find the right occupation for themselves. And maybe it’s ironic, because doesn’t he think of himself as an artist? I guess he’d say he earned it by putting in time at the craft.