BookLife Review: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, by Anthony Bourdain

chefs, behind-the-scenes in restaurant kitchen, culinary training, French cooking, Italian cooking, substance use and abuse, restaurant business and failures, Anthony Bourdain, memoir

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, is a memoir classic and a worthy read for anyone who enjoys food, restaurants, a behind-the-scenes expose, or followed the tornado of a genius that was Anthony Bourdain before his tragic suicide in 2018. Bourdain lived and worked in the 1970s-1990s in the rise of fine cuisine in the U.S. and in New York in particular, well before the onset of TV’s celebrity chefs. In many ways, he was the pioneer who exposed the raw, rough and tumble, cut-throat yet familial behind-the-scenes reality of successful and unsuccessful restaurant kitchens before the Food Channel was even a phenomenon. Later known as a travel documentarian exploring cultures and foods around the world (Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown), he was first and ultimately, a chef. The book virtually rocks with is rough, raucous, vibrant and colorful language and a voice that you can almost hear, even reading the printed version.

Bourdain first relays the influences he experienced as a child traveling to Europe with his parents and experiencing French cuisine, including the almighty oyster, for the first time as a child. It was his lightbulb moment; the impetus for his pursuit of this career. Bourdain carries us through his Culinary Institute of America training, which he makes light of, and then into what is clearly the training he respected—at the feet and the side of truly talented chefs.

Bourdain’s writing has a distinct voice, one that you can almost hear in your head as you read. It is confessional, crude, stunningly honest, and almost unfiltered. He unabashedly describes idiosyncratic and sometimes difficult staff and owner personalities, failures (his own and those of others), both the filth and vermin and the spotless splendor of kitchens, foul-language, strains of misogyny and homophobia, and the work-the grueling, long-hour, hot, greasy, dangerous, artistic, rewarding, collaborative work that occurs in restaurant kitchens.

Bourdain’s book is not entirely chronological, and an attempt to map the history would require a wall of timelines. He creates chapters along themes or lessons he learned—the variety of ways chefs are trained (or not), the learning curves in a kitchen, the traits that make a kitchen well or poorly run, why restaurants fail or succeed, essential tools and tricks for creating elevated food at home, the exhaustive and detailed dance of creating 300 individual plated meals to order on a busy night in an elite restaurant serving hundreds of meals, and a series of examples of culinary genius and disasters he encounters along the way. Perhaps Bourdain’s own attention span jumped around, but it is fascinating to encounter his world in one juicy topic after another. The Day in the Life chapter in which Bourdain details, step by step, the minutes and hours of a day are breathtaking. From waking up thinking about inventory, orders and what to use for daily specials, through kitchen prep, food prep and then the pan by pan system and genius of getting each table’s order prepared to deliver all at once, as many as 8 different orders and appetizers, is mind-boggling. A single table order does not happen in isolation, it is undertaken while dozens of others are in various states of preparation and completion. It is multi-tasking and creative genius of the highest order, and fascinating to read about.

Two chapters late in the book foreshadow Bourdain’s future. At the height of his success as executive chef at Les Halles in New York, the owners ask Bourdain to travel to Japan to help the Les Halles chefs there align their French cooking with the New York flagship restaurant. He does that, but mostly he describes his love-affair with exploring Tokyo, its streets, its people, its food and its beverages. The reader can see the travel show being conceived from this experience. In another chapter, Bourdain details the challenges of staffing a kitchen. He prizes above all punctuality, reliability (never call in sick) and loyalty. Bourdain describes a number of troubled souls who cooked for him, convicts, addicts, and hard-working immigrants from Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia. He addresses a few who committed suicide after being fired, by him or other chefs. He opines that the substance abuse and dark histories many restaurant workers bring to their kitchens is not caused by the kitchen or their departure from it—it pre-exists and post-exists. His remained.

I read this book during the period that I watched season two of The Bear (a riveting, award-winning and gritty behind the scenes drama about a Chicago restaurant kitchen) on Hulu. Perhaps I was reminded of the book by the first season of the show. I’m glad my book-loving friend had added Kitchen Confidential to her reading list so I could gobble up the idea.