Anthony Bourdain aspired to the kitchen early in life, after setting aside a childhood fondness for bologna sandwiches in favor of foie gras and filet mignon, his road-to-Damascus moment a perfect oyster he ate on a family trip to France. He also wanted to be a writer—so much so that after 20 years on the hot line he enrolled in a writing workshop led by Gordon Lish, the editor who shaped Raymond Carver’s best-known stories. Then he went off and wrote, producing in quick succession two noirish novels: Bone in the Throat, which our reviewer called “a fair appetizer but no main course,” and Gone Bamboo, which, well, we didn’t like at all.
Neither book sold. Discouraged, Bourdain thought about giving up writing. But then, taking seriously the “write what you know” mantra, he produced a book that changed his life, to say nothing of the lives of every literate haunter of restaurants. Kitchen Confidential, published in 2000, was in part a memoir, highlighted by a shaggy dog story in which, having seen a newlywed bride consummate the nuptials not with her husband but with a salty chef, he knew that the life of cramped quarters and greasy Danskos was truly for him.
Moreover, he delivered a set of instructions for diners that had the force of gnomic life lessons. Examine a restaurant’s bathroom, he counseled: If it’s dirty, even the tiniest bit out of order, then you can imagine what the kitchen must look like. If you have your wits about you, then you’ll never eat fish on Monday: The seafood market is closed on the weekend, so it was probably purchased on Thursday for service over the next three days—making the fish five days old. Still, he wrote, sagely, “Good food and good eating are about risk.” There’s a bad clam out there somewhere with all our names on it, which is no reason to give up eating spaghetti alle vongole. You take a risk every time you enter a restaurant, and as for eating a street taco or dirty-water hot dog from a cart: Remember, he urged, that “your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park.”
Bourdain was just as quick to dispense advice to would-be chefs that was no less Solomonic, advice that applies to all of us. Don’t start a project without the proper mise en place, he said, without everything you need being where you can easily and logically get at it—and know what you need beforehand. Be clean. Don’t make excuses. Work harder. Learn to speak Spanish, the lingua franca of the restaurant world, no matter what kind of food is being cooked. “Be prepared to witness every variety of human folly and injustice,” he intoned—witness, but not necessarily accept.
Tony Bourdain is gone now, a fact that should break all our hearts. As I write, every restaurant in the land has turned into a takeout joint, dining in company being a no-no in a time of pandemic. But Kitchen Confidential lives on, a paean and homage to the chef within us, and the thoughtful eater, too.
Gregory McNamee is a contributing editor.
