Food, glorious food

 Oh my God I am like two entire weeks behind on book reviews, at least.

 

I borrowed Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential from my brother a few days after the news broke. I hadn't read any of his books or watched more than a handful of episodes of his shows so I was a little surprised by how upset I was to hear about his death. It might be partly because so many other people were also upset about it--my foodies and travel-loving friends were upset, obviously, but so much of the leftist activism world was also mourning the way his work showcased working-class cuisine from cultures all around the world, not to mention his devastating critiques of ghouls like Henry Kissinger. 

 

Kitchen Confidential is a funny, irreverent, slightly terrifying look at the "back of house" in a wide variety of restaurants. Bourdain, despite being an old, had a job-hopping habit that makes my generation's serial interns look like postwar company men, apparently due in part to that being normal in the restaurant industry but in part due to a prolonged period of drug problems and generally being sort of a fuckup for a while. The incredible rate at which restaurants fail didn't help, either. 

 

The book is made up in part of writings that had appeared elsewhere, in publications like The New Yorker, which means that the book tells Bourdain's story in sort-of-but-not-quite chronological order--the chapters are each on a particular subject, but the chapter on culinary school is in the earlier part of the book and the chapter on going to Tokyo to train the executive chef at Les Halles Tokyo is near the end, that sort of thing. 

 

If you're familiar with Bourdain's commentary on his shows, you'll know more or less what to expect in terms of voice and sense of humor in this book--it's pure Bourdain commentary the whole way: sarcastic, foul-mouthed, irreverent, self-deprecating, and vocal in his advocacy for the working people of the industry, even as he also makes fun of basically all of his coworkers. It's a reasonably educational look into the state of the restaurant industry, or at least the way it was 20 years ago (I'm sure some things have changed and some things haven't), and it's also sort of a wacky office comedy, and it's also an ode to the delights of good food. There are some tips for home cooks on restaurant-ifying their dinner parties to impress their guests, and some advice for restaurant customers on what not to order on which days of the week. Honestly, it's a bit all over the place, but in a good way.