Sunday 8 July 2012

63. Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential


I skipped a week and I apologise. I figured though that after 62 weeks, one week would not be too bad. And I have a good excuse, because the week before last my boyfriend and I had to live in a flat without a bathroom. A flat in complete disarray because the landlord decided to change it into a luxury apartment for the festival. Long story short we moved. A bit farther away from city centre, but it's an amazing flat and I'm happy because the first thing that I have organised are my books (mind you, I have many more books in The Netherlands):

Now, let me start discussing this week's book by Anthony Bourdain, who is apparently a famous chef. Kitchen Confidential is about his rise in the world of culinary establishments in New York. It's about his ups, but really mainly about his downs. He used a lot of drugs and somehow he managed to secure a foothold in the ever changing world of top-range restaurants.

I'm a foodie, but I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to life in a restaurant. I order food, but I never think about what the kitchen goes through. And Bourdain is unable to give me a good view in the kitchen. I think he chose the wrong backdrop for his books and he fails to describe his work, instead he goes on and on about several colleagues of his and different establishments without going into much detail about any of it. So, I feel like I've quickly skimmed over his life, but I still have no idea what it's about.

Maybe that's what life in the kitchen is all about though. Living on the fast track. It's not suitable for novels though, even for an autobiography it's too hasty, but what can you expect of a man who works over 80 hours a week. You can't expect him to sit down and describe his life in detail. He describes the pace of the book perfectly when he tells us the 14 things you need to be ready for when you're an aspiring chef,:
"7. Lazy, sloppy and slow are bad. Enterprising, crafty and hyperactive are good" (Bourdain 297)

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