Kitchen Confidential:
Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Anthony
Bourdain
I've
enjoyed Anthony Bourdain's somewhat cynical take on the celebrity
chef phenomenon- of which, make no mistake, he is a significant
beneficiary- and decided that I might as well pick up a copy of the
memoir that started it all for
him (in
an updated edition). In one sense, the book offers everything you
might expect from Bourdain: filthy language, a bone-dry
sense of humor, and frank assessments of himself, his coworkers, and
the culinary
industry.
It is, however, a bit less successful as an exposé
and a memoir. The former can, perhaps, be chalked up to time,
especially as the pronouncements
in the
most prominent gross-out chapter, "From Our Kitchen to Your
Table", have
become common knowledge by this point.
Many of Bourdain's big reveals simply
don't
stand the test of time; ironically, this is largely the case because
of the book's success and subsequent
impact on the
culinary world. Thus,
the memoir's tell-all aspects of Kitchen
Confidential
are more important within
the
context of the
book's publication rather than they are on their own for contemporary
readers.
There is, of course, more behind the curtain than is generally known,
but the book's shock factor, a significant part of its initial
appeal, has largely diminished over time.
Bourdain,
however, can hardly be blamed for this, and the book is, at its core,
a memoir as well as an insider's view of the culinary industry. Here
too, however, the book ultimately gets the better of itself. Bits and
pieces of Bourdain's history are sprinkled throughout the narrative
and his larger proclamations about the industry, and while the
chapters are well integrated with one another the overall
chronology often gets blurred, causing the book to essentially fail
as a coherent narrative of Bourdain's time in the culinary industry.
It is not Bourdain's use of techniques such as foreshadowing and
callbacks that sink the ship, but rather the order in which
information is generally presented: despite
reading small snippets here and there, readers leave with no clue how
to fit the events of
the "Bigfoot" chapter into the general narrative. The
chapter itself is well-written, engaging, and memorable for its
depiction of a ruthless character who
set
the tone for much of Bourdain's subsequent life (even
if the reader can't quite figure out when
this occurred). That the author's redemption
from the depravities of addiction is not placed in any sort of
temporal context is frustrating and makes his turnaround far less
impressive, or indeed engaging, as it would be within the proper
context. This is a shame, as I'm sure that, given his general
propensity to call it like it is and his exquisitely tuned bullshit
detector, Bourdain could have provided a refreshingly honest, frank
story of addiction and recovery. But
that story, for
whatever reasons, disappears
below the surface as the book's
now-dated
(and therefore currently less interesting)
exposé elements take center stage.
Likewise,
Bourdain
is more prone to proclaim his passion for cooking than to actually
illustrate it; while there is no doubt in my mind that food is, and
has long been, the driving force in Bourdain's life, that fact tends
to get lost amid his
gleeful descent into the grimy underworld that
exists beneath
even some of the most highly regarded restaurants. This is all the
more disappointing given Bourdain's excellent ear for language and
his hilarious, seemingly
honest
characterizations of himself and his various coworkers. He recounts
numerous criminal and otherwise questionable activities with glee and
pulls no punches whatsoever about the grimy underworld that lies
beneath the shimmering surface of even some of the most highly rated
restaurants. That said, and however fun it can be to recognize that
chefs are some of the most foul-mouthed and dirty-minded members of
society, Bourdain's attitude toward sexual harassment occasionally
led me to set
the book down in
disgust.
Though Bourdain pays lip service to the dangers of sexism, even going
so far as to praise the women (and, less often, the
men)
who survive and thrive in such a caustic environment, his implicit
acceptance of the status
quo as a situation that the
weak-minded should just be expected to deal with is problematic,
to say the least. In
riding the fine line
between praising the culture and criticizing it, Bourdain
falls on the wrong side on too
many occasions.
For
all of its faults, however, the book retains a certain kind of
rough-around-the-edges appeal, and it certainly exhibits the
take-no-prisoners attitude one expects of Bourdain. Kitchen
Confidential
may suffer from the effects of aging and missed opportunities to
craft a compelling narrative, but it retains enough of Bourdain's
trademark cynicism that it should please his fans when taken with a
significant grain of salt.
Grade:
B
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