That is basically my summary of Kitchen Confidential. This is the book that MADE Anthony Bourdain. After this book was published, he became a celebrity, and actually met a lot of the chefs he talks about in the book. I know this because my edition has a new forward by Bourdain detailing the aftermath of the publication. In many ways, especially in the forward and the last chapter, Bourdain reminds me of my dad - the bad boy who takes a round about path to happiness in an artistic profession. The fact that after this book was published Bourdain married a much younger woman and had a red-headed daughter doesn't hurt the impression. So, you know, I have to like the guy.
The book is a roughly chronological account of the author's path to becoming a chef and also a revealing look at the culture of restaurant kitchens. Bourdain is frank about his drug use and the fact that he went to culinary school just to one-up a summer coworker. Given my age, I can't verify what he says about the cocaine-soaked culture of the 70s and 80s, but he certainly seems to have enjoyed it. The description of how restaurant kitchens work makes all chefs sound like pirate captains running a barely-restrained crew of hooligans. Most conversation between kitchen staff seems to revolve around sex via unconventional orifices and/or suggestions as to the nature of a given staffer's paternity. Apparently that is just par for the course in the NYC restaurant world (at least pre-1999 when this book was published).
There is a chapter about things chefs don't want you to know. Apparently, any seafood in a Sunday brunch menu is suspect and waiters will recycle uneaten bread from one table to another. Judging by the preface and the reviews I have read online, this is supposed to be scandalous. It really didn't surprise me much. In fact, that was my take on a lot of this book. Maybe it's because I live in a world of Top Chef and Hell's Kitchen. Or because I have watched Anthony Bourdain on the Travel Channel for years. But nothing in this book was particularly revelatory to me. Anthony Bourdain swears a lot? You don't say. Chefs have scarred hands? I got scars working at Panera, for Pete's sake! Soup, it's hot, who knew? Sea food might not be fresh all the time? I live in MISSOURI! If you get fresh sea food it probably came from the Mississippi and you should be worried.
I think this book just reads very differently now, more than ten years after its publication. Maybe it's like a classic Hollywood movie that seems cliche to modern audiences simply because it was the movie that invented the cliches we see all the time now. What was daring and new in 1999 is old hat in 2012.
That's not to say I didn't enjoy this book. I LOVE Anthony Bourdain. I am a huge fan of No Reservations and have used episodes of that show as preparation for trips to Osaka, Barcelona and Paris. On TV, Mr. Bourdain comes across as entertainingly crass, and that's also true in this book. There is a lot of language in this book that I would never use in polite society. And there are also a lot of clever turns of phrase and funny anecdotes. I did laugh out loud (occasionally on a city bus) while reading this book, which is pretty rare for me.
Still I somehow expected more. The chronology was not consistent throughout the book. At some points I wasn't sure whether something was happening before or after the author stopped inhaling and injecting large doses of illegal substances... which makes a big difference in how you interpret certain behavior.
Some of the chapters were written as articles for magazines, and at some points the book read more like a series of essays rather than a cohesive whole. That's not really a bad thing, it's just not what I hoped for.
Also, on a sad note, Bourdain's ex-wife Nancy comes up a lot in this book. Then, she was not his ex, and he writes sweetly about her and how well she puts up with his insanity. Knowing that they are now divorced and he has remarried made reading this somewhat bittersweet.
So, I guess, I enjoyed the book overall and was happy that I read it, but it has not aged as well as its author. Still, I really enjoyed it. Even though it is not of the same literary caliber as Wives and Daughters, I did have a better time reading it, and that is mostly what I'm judging on. So I'll give it a 6.5 out of 10 for overall experience with an added 9 out of 10 for a few select, hilarious chapters.
I promise soon I will rate a book as something other than 6/10. Honest.
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