kitchen confidential

i know i am late to the party on this, but the man is interesting and therefore deserved an examination. kitchen confidential is as much pop culture epic as it is epicurian journal. it reads such that the reader feels like he is directing the course of the narrative. one finds oneself thinking, "i wonder what-" only to have the thought answered before it was fully formed. intuitive writing like that is as rare a form as can be found. it is void of pretense and full of sounds and focus and communion. anthony bourdain has found his voice and is here exercising it like a booming artist.

read the passage below wherein bourdain defines what it is to want to drink, what it is to a sentient man to want to engage with his peers in an atmosphere of lowered inhibitions, and how thoroughly satisfying it can be to speak openly on all the taboo subjects, religion and politics and sexuality and whatever. whatever gets people uptight and private. it is in these conversations that a man comes to truly define himself after all. he can use bentley's or jewels only as a mask. but as a man thinks a man is. it is the forming of opinions and real values that say the most about a man and that matter in the scope of humanity or existence. anthony bourdain is a badass-i am here to say.

this paragraph describes a time in bourdain's life after he had sort of cleaned his act up. he is married and not addicted to heroin and working his ass off as chef at a prominent new york city restaurant. he spent this chapter writing about the work and the people. he describes his assistant chefs and those who could do in a world of pace and vigor in rich tones, speaking of their ethnicity and work ethic and describing the action in and around the kitchen such that you can sense the sweat on their brows and envision the wrinkled expressions on the faces of those who strain. sous chefs accomplish feats of daring-do. some waiters get it-others don't. at this particular point he has described a 16 or 17 hour day in the restaurant business in all its gory, fantastic detail and finally leaves the restaurant and walks off into the night.

I'm thinking about going home but I know I'll just lie there, grinding my teeth and smoking. I tell the cabbie to take me to the corner of 50th and Broadway, where I walk downstairs to the subway arcade and the Siberia Bar, a grungy little underground rumpus room where the drinks are served in plastic cups and the jukebox suits my taste. There are a few cookies from the Hilton at the bar, as well as a couple of saggy, bruised-looking strippers from a club up the street. Tracy, the owner of the joint, is there, which means I won't be paying for drinks tonight. It's 1:00A.M., and I have to be in at 7:30 mañana, but the Cramps are playing on the jukebox, Tracy immediately fiddles with the machine so there's twenty free credits-and that first beer tastes mighty good. The Hilton cookies are arguing about mise-en-place. One of them is bitching about another cook nicking salt off his station, and the other cook doesn't see why that's such a big deal-so I'm gonna be involved in this conversation. The Cramps tune is followed by the Velvets singing "Pale Blue Eyes," and Tracy suggests a shot of Georgian vodka he's got stashed in the freezer...

and what's next? next is a ride away from the utilitarian grind of the every day, away from all the pretending that you give a shit about certain things and instead expressing your true, sincere feelings of love and adoration for some art form or another, a friend, a new idea you heard about or something profoundly trivial. to call this time escape from responsibility is to deny the cure for responsibility. i don't trust people who don't drink or engage in some form of inhibition combating vice. they hide things and put on airs. they're covering up self-perceived inadequacies. they are not generous and they do not share their selves on a level of those who trust on such a level they are comfortable getting out of sorts.

this is bourdain's charm. he portrays a class of people often shunned or in some way denigrated by society in a shameful case of a naked emperor. in fact these are the salt of the earth. these are god's children if ever there could be a god of love. these are the open, tradesmen of the trade winds sharing in and out like great, big, interrogative marks, poets by action, seekers by day and night, friends to be sure. he portrays by representation, and the voice of a kind, engaged sage comes through.

kitchen confidential is the evidence of an individual from the drinking, cooking, working, connecting, enjoying, struggling, winning and losing, succeeding and failing, beautiful-loser class, capturing some of the magic of his life to share.