Anthony Bourdain’s Writing Will Kick-Start Your Creative Juices
Why ‘Kitchen Confidential’ is the best I’ve read.
For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we’ve all had to become disappears when we’re confronted with something as simple as a plate of food. — Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain. Where to start?!
I’m gonna go right out on a limb and say it — The best book I’ve ever read was Kitchen Confidential.
Not because I’m a budding chef, a restaurateur, or any type of kitchen-residing hospitality worker. I didn’t really learn to cook until I was 23, and even then having spaghetti bolognese two nights in a row and chicken korma the next two nights doesn't really constitute cheffing.
My first job, part-time during college, was as a kitchen assistant in a residential home. So I did at least gain some appreciation for the frenetic pace of kitchens as described so eloquently by Bourdain. There was a set number of residents requiring breakfast, lunch, and dinner — 44 — daily.
This was a lot of washing-up and carting food trolleys to dining rooms. And, as most residents had families that were paying a bomb to keep them there, it was deemed necessary that residents were given the option of starters and desserts. Every day.
Even I don’t eat that much and I’m trying to bulk up.
So, on top of carefully curating the chef’s requirements, shipping the completed concoction into the dining room — various dining rooms, both uphill, downhill, and across darkened alleyways into separate but affiliated buildings and back — one then had the rather thankless task of scooping 88 ( two scoops per resident) circles of vanilla ice cream into 44 ice cream sundae glasses.
And remember those families I mentioned earlier? You didn’t think they spent the day visiting a residential home with the sole purpose of exchanging loving sentiments did you?
No, when they pulled up into the already overflowing car park at half ten on a Sunday morning they know they are facing into a day of indulgence. Enough cups of tea to fill a septic tank — all produced by me.
The residents drank tea too.
And that ‘idle’ pastry chef was not idle for long. Instead, mountains of cakes and breaded biscuits of every description were needed to satisfy the families and friends who weren’t a part of the resident's dining schedule — although, on reflection, it might have made things considerably easier on the kitchen staff. Instead, it was generally accepted that they could eat shite food on the assumption that they ate breakfast first at home, and would (if they still had room) have their dinner in their own homes that evening.
The reason I’m telling you this isn't just to inform you of all the various delicacies that a kitchen must conjure up but to also make you aware too that for all the offerings — which, I trust you understand now were frantically ushered out to their respective diners — there are an accompanying six or seven utensils that will, in turn, require washing.
So yeah, I have a vague idea of the workings of a kitchen. But I don’t have a clue about all those fancy names that Bourdain claims as meals in Kitchen Confidential. This brings me back to the main point that it is the best book I have ever read. Quite a statement. I usually adopt a more neutral position and name a few of my favorite books rather than go all out for one.
Despite spending the last while doing my best impression of Bourdain describing a kitchen, the reason I picked this book as my favorite is not down to food anecdotes. It is entirely because of his writing.
As I said, I know nothing about food, so for this to be the case is something.
It’s conversational.
Bourdain writes as he speaks, a no holds barred effort at honesty. He won’t treat you, the reader, like a fool. So, you may not agree with everything he says in Kitchen confidential:
Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans … are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit. — Anthony Bourdain
Especially in this day and age. But you will probably find at least a sliver of a cell somewhere inside you agree with how he says it. I wish I came up with the quote above, and so will you.
That’s another thing. He makes writing look easy. Where does he come up with this stuff?
Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime…Please, treat your garlic with respect…Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screwtop jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don’t deserve to eat garlic. — Anthony Bourdain
What I took from the above, is that he could have stopped after the first sentence. But then, we would gloss over it in mere seconds. Garlic is divine? OK, that’s great. But then he gets antagonizing. And relatable. I’m left feeling embarrassed and defensive about how I take my garlic just as he said not to. At the same time, I don’t feel put out because the writing was so poetically put.
Above all Bourdain makes you want to be a chef despite how tough he portrays it to be. Good writing does that. Good writing also lets me, and others, with no experience of cheffing, find the book extremely engaging.
This engagement is developed by his abundance of relatable human emotions. The tidbits, idiosyncrasies, and general apathy we often feel towards others. And then framing that in a way that makes us reconsider our own neuroticism and how frivolous it all is at the end of the day.
Assume the worst. About everybody. But don’t let this poisoned outlook affect your job performance. Let it all roll off your back. Ignore it. Be amused by what you see and suspect. Just because someone you work with is a miserable, treacherous, self-serving, capricious and corrupt asshole shouldn’t prevent you from enjoying their company, working with them or finding them entertaining. — Anthony Bourdain
It is about people. This book is less about food, cooking, or kitchens, and more about our common humanity — especially our shared weaknesses.
So who the hell, exactly, are these guys, the boys and girls in the trenches? You might get the impression from the specifics of my less than stellar career that all line cooks are wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts and psychopaths. You wouldn’t be too far off base. The business, as respected three-star chef Scott Bryan explains it, attracts ‘fringe elements’, people for whom something in their lives has gone terribly wrong. Maybe they didn’t make it through high school, maybe they’re running away from something-be it an ex-wife, a rotten family history, trouble with the law, a squalid Third World backwater with no opportunity for advancement. Or maybe, like me, they just like it here. — Anthony Bourdain
What makes it most appealing, for me, is that lust for life seeps from every page. A wildness. Unconventionality. That’s why it’s the best — a literary Mardi Gras.
“Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria’s mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once. — Anthony Bourdain
