Confesiones de un chef: Aventuras en el transfondo de la cocina

I loved his frankness and coarseness, the way he didn't beat around the bush and told it as it is. Also, his reading of this book was excellent!

[4.5] Hot damn, Bourdain could write. Despite his legions of fans, plenty of them well-read people, I hadn't expected his prose to be so sparky and propulsive. He definitely wasn't just a TV personality. And this book is so action-packed it deserves to be classified as Adventure.

The structure seems quite daring by the standards of popular non-fiction from twenty years ago, and takes more liberties and digressions within itself than might be expected from the section titles. There's a strong sense here of someone who's confident for other reasons, despite little published experience in the form - and I (and hundreds of thousands of other readers) think he pulls it off. It works as a whole, not only as a series of what we might now call essays. Life provided him with great material to place near the end and then fortuitously added to the structure after publication. His stint in Japan at a branch of his then-employer's small restaurant chain, and the overwhelming enthusiasm he discovers for Tokyo streetfood read like the "to be continued" trailer for his TV travel shows that were commissioned off the back of this book.

Most of us Goodreads regulars probably know of lots of books we'd like to read one day but don't bother shelving on the site because the likelihood of getting round to them seems slight. Even more so IMO if the books are well-known and reminders of their very existence are not so necessary as for obscure titles. "Most of Bourdain" was that for me, but then when you see a book like this on someone else's physical shelves, that can be the nudge towards actually reading it. Kitchen Confidential is a fast, compelling read, and currently I don't have time (especially if I want to catch up with reading challenges) to start a bunch of big old classics.

But there were two or three times when I picked it up and thought "I'm not sure I can be bothered with people like this any more" - quite that crazy and intoxicated and disruptive and loud and laddish, I mean. Maybe reducing it to a metaphorical volume 7/10 would have been okay? At my age, people who used to be debauched and who have somewhat (though not necessarily entirely) cleaned up their act, are better company than the full-on hellraising article. (This is why I didn't give the book 5 stars.) Though one notable thing about AB and most of his colleagues here, in contrast to people with similar lifestyles in other industries: if they were anything, they were reliable.

It made me think a bit about my complicated but largely positive relationship with masculinity. I find a lot of the typical behaviour of groups of women tedious and irritating and try to stay away from it as much as I can. I had to admit whilst reading Kitchen Confidential - in a way that I wouldn't have allowed myself to when I was in my twenties - that the extended banter described there is equally irritating and dislikable (though there is arguably a verbal creativity to it - before it gets too repetitive - that I can respect). If it were possible to do a reverse Orlando and magically become male - as I have daydreamed about at many points in my life since I read Woolf's novel in my late teens - dealing with this stuff would surely be one of the least enjoyable aspects of life. Most men I've known reasonably well as friends, lovers or both, haven't been big fans of extended sports banter and the like either (though seem to have some reasonable skill with it where necessary). I'm just not a group-orientated person, most of the people I get on best with aren't either, and I think there can be something peculiarly suffocating about large single-sex groups when one is expected to fit in with them as a member of the same sex. Men usually learn to have a shell that fits, at least for a few hours at a time, even if they don't really like group banter. It's easier to have a carapace or facade in the conversations of all/mostly-male groups - there is a way to join in without revealing yourself. Whereas women's collective culture is often based on opening up sincerely about things on which either a) I probably feel or experience differently from everyone else there, and about which I learned half a lifetime ago that I CBA with the weird looks and silences, or b) I don't want to share with people like that, and definitely not in a group. (I am now imagining women doing comedy mock boasting about heaviness or lightness of periods - in the style of  this old interview between Will Self & Bruce Robinson where they are messing about with dick jokes - and wondering why that isn't a thing. Easier to deal with than a bunch of women giving you another 'not one of us' look for saying you hardly get any pain, as the things-not-in-common keep stacking up through a conversation.)

Back to the book in hand ... Bourdain later regretted aspects of it, and posted on a blog in December 2017:
To the extent which my work in Kitchen Confidential celebrated or prolonged a culture that allowed the kind of grotesque behaviors we’re hearing about all too frequently is something I think about daily, with real remorse.

Whilst reading it nearly four years later, I thought often about articles, particularly from the Guardian, about how restaurant kitchen culture is changing, especially but not only since #metoo ... I'm assuming that, because it's the Guardian, that the change is very patchy indeed and probably with younger teams in urban areas. (Having, before this year, spent so much time at home ill and on the internet, I used to overestimate the impact Very Online social justice culture had in the real world in general, and am now seeing the difference, between internet and reality, especially in middle-aged centre-left people. I'd assume it's no different in kitchens, and change is probably slower if anything.) Saying that, though, Bourdain admits in Kitchen Confidential that not all chef contemporaries of his were as wild and aggressive as his team.

And his TV shows demonstrate there was more to him than belligerence - unlike, for example, the one-note Gordon Ramsay. The other day I saw yet again that question "which (dead) famous people would you most like to have dinner with?" Based on my experience of meeting a somewhat-famous person I admired (live, obviously), I'd say that with some common answers (especially renowned wits) you risk barely being able to keep up with them and feeling a little embarrassed, or like a mere audience. However, Bourdain - as well as being someone who'd choose, or cook, amazing food - appears to have been good conversationally with different types of people, and whilst intelligent and well-read, was not intimidatingly so like a Wilde or an Einstein.

(I also have some opinions about Bourdain's last days, Asia Argento and media coverage, but I'm not sure to what extent GR still cracks down on posts that discuss authors' personal lives, so to be on the safe side I will refrain.)

This book is maybe not as "of its time" as some would like to think. I'm sure there are still restaurants run this way, and inexperienced staff jumping ship to try and find somewhere friendlier. Regardless, it's a fun read with great prose, especially if you enjoy good food and picaresque adventures, and you have a decent tolerance for accounts of macho bullshit and eating dead animals - though if that's you, you probably already read this years ago.

n  "I'll be right here. Until they drag me off the line."n

Like many of my generation I grew up with Anthony Bourdain's various TV series playing in the background, and I always had a warm place for him in my heart. He was one of those public figures whose air of candidness allows you feel like you know them personally, even if you also know that that's an illusion.

Maybe because of that sense of closeness, it took me awhile to fully register his death. Only in the last couple of years has it really sunk in for me that he's gone, and what that means—the usual but never-easy ordeal of coming to terms with a cherished life cut short before it had to be. But I've also been a little wary of the mythologizing that's gone on since that day in June of 2018. In those five years I've seen Bourdain transformed into an almost saintly figure by his fans, even as the sordid details of his last months are repeatedly dredged up for tabloid-like sensationalism. I suspect the latter would have infuriated him and the former would've made him laugh, while also probably infuriating him. Whatever else he may or may not have been, Tony always made it clear that he was no saint, and had no intention to be. That was, for lack of a less skin-crawling word, a core part of his "brand."

That's extremely obvious when reading this book, the tell-all memoir of culinary New York that first put Bourdain on the map as a media personality right at the turn of the new millennium. Now that he's been known primarily as a TV host and professional traveler for over twenty years, it's easy to forget that Tony spent the first quarter-century of his working life in restaurant kitchens. His shows were always food-centric, sure, but he rarely did the "celebrity chef" thing of showing off his own know-how on camera, and he seemed to resent the prospect that he might be grouped together with the likes of Bobby Flay, Gordon Ramsay, or Emeril Lagasse.

But Kitchen Confidential came before all that. This book is all about the chef's (or sous-chef's, or line cook's, or dishwasher's) lifestyle, with the scope rarely expanding beyond the insular world of higher-end New York dining. The approach is snarky and deliberately provocative, full of profanity, semi-politically-incorrect remarks, and gross-out details about the nastier side of food prep. This is not Anthony Bourdain the TV host, soulfully meditating on the legacy of U.S. imperialism in Cambodia. This is Tony Bourdain the punk rock chef, gleefully spilling the dirty secrets of an industry with plenty to hide, apparently unconcerned that he might be implicated in the process.

The book is definitely a product of its time, with its distinctly '90s edginess and swaggeringly masculine POV. There's a lot of "boys will be boys"-style commentary on behavior that would today be considered workplace harassment or worse, and Bourdain admitted in later years to feeling guilty for the role he played in normalizing these sorts of toxic, male-dominated work environments. At the same time, most of the depictions of bad behavior here arguably serve more of a documentary purpose ("This is who's cooking your food, like it or not") than a celebratory one, and—without letting him off the hook too much—I think it's pretty clear that Bourdain himself is much more sensitive than he lets on. He is, for instance, very very insistent about flagging up the crucial role that Latin American immigrants play in virtually every New York kitchen, and takes every opportunity to express his admiration for these underappreciated and maligned workers. He's also refreshingly open about his own privileged upbringing and access to resources many of his colleagues didn't have.

Either way, I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into when I started, so I wasn't caught off-guard by the tone. Honestly it was even a relief to go back to this younger Tony, when he was still full of vigor and not quite as haunted as his later manifestations seem, at least in hindsight, to be. I was reading this because I respect and miss him, sure, but I was also reading it for fun, and it was nice to find that I could still do that. Even listening to the audiobook, energetically narrated by Bourdain himself, I never felt overwhelmed by emotion in the way even a few minutes of one of his shows can sometimes make me feel nowadays. The written word can be intimate, but it's also mediated in a way that candid footage of a person isn't.

That's not to say that there aren't painful passages here. Bourdain doesn't linger on his personal life, but he is upfront about his struggles with heroin addiction, and even after he kicks that particular habit he still depicts a lifestyle saturated with booze, painkillers, and cigarette smoke. He never explicitly mentions depression or mental illness, but he speaks of passing years of his life in an aimless fog. He muses a few times about his eventual death and legacy, and at one point talks casually about a period when he consoled himself with the reminder that he could always take his own life. But these are fleeting glimpses; mostly the tone is life-affirming and forward-looking. The book ends with Tony just starting to discover the joys of world travel, and seemingly excited for what the future holds.

Tempting as it is now to search for significance in Bourdain's every word, I don't think Kitchen Confidential invites or even holds up to that sort of deep scrutiny. It's a pretty casual affair, more of a hodge-podge of topical essays, obviously-exaggerated anecdotes, and autobiographical sketches than anything more linear or coherent, and there's frankly little insight into Tony the human being as opposed to Tony the chef; we get one brief episode from his childhood, a few fleeting mentions of a wife, some offhand remarks about his addiction, and that's about it. The rest is focused on the food. Personally I enjoyed it for what it was, and didn't need or even particularly want it to be anything more.

The book's author is clearly impressed with having passed through the esteemed halls of Vassar College, yet prouder still of his hard knocks and rough-and-tumble street degree earned working for a slew of restaurants. Much of the book is spent describing the working stiffs in the culinary field and their wildly anti-social and anti-establishment behavior and greedy incompetent restaurant owners. The anecdotes were mildly amusing for the first hundred pages but tiresome by the end. If you're stuck on a plane with nothing else to read, go for it!

I really enjoyed watching Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown over the years and knew I needed to get to Kitchen Confidential one day. Rest in peace big guy.

Did this book surprise me with what happens at a restaurant? Nope, not at all but I'm glad I finally read it.
I worked as a server while in college and my husband has worked as a server and bartender off and on over the last 20 years. We know how the industry works and the things not mentioned to non-restaurant people.

I did enjoy how Anthony Bourdain did not pull any punches showing how the restaurant industry really is and how stressful it gets.

When the kitchen is organized, the chefs are working well together and the serving staff have their shit together, you'll know.
The meal will be amazing and the dinning experience is well worth the cost!

It is the book that arguably started it all. Gordon Ramsey is a caricature of the ideas proffered here. It is chef as rock star written in a gonzo style and a punk aesthetic. It is the reason I use a Global chef's knife.

Reading this only now, in 2021, you could say I missed that gourmet meal when it was piping hot. The timing turns out perfect for that documentary that just came out, however, and I’ll try to watch Road Runner within the next few days. This wasn’t planned, believe it or not.

I enjoyed Kitchen Confidential. My picks are all over the place as of late, it feels like I’m trying things on for size again, but Eat a Peach by David Chang was already a hit with me in January and trying out Bourdain’s book this time around brought me back to a similar happy place. The twenty-year difference between the two memoirs makes itself immediately felt; I got a great kick out of it. Popular dishes, star ingredients, other celebrity chefs in the making and their own restaurants, bands the crew listened to while cooking: surely you can imagine the trip back in time Kitchen Confidential now represents. Ooh ah, Frank Sinatra just made it into the dining room. And wait, is that Kirk Douglas over there in that banquette?

Aside from loads of personal stories about bad boys – and girls – rubbing elbows in overheated spaces, there is a wealth of info in this book about restaurant dynamics in general and the constellation of people involved in the food business. I expect most of it to remain relevant to this day. Bourdain has a knack for pacing and never stays in place terribly long, literally or figuratively; one thing that Kitchen Confidential does to perfection, two decades after its publication, is to keep you entertained. Still works!

Now bring out the popcorn, I’m heading to the movies.

This should be more aptly titled "Kitchen Confidential: Adventures of a Self-indulgent Arsehole."

That's it.

PS: If you still decide to pick this up, do yourself a favour and avoid the audiobook.