I’m sitting at the table, my chair turned sideways, as I sway and hope the plastic won’t give in. The ashtray on the table needs changing, and there’s no tablecloth, just a good old plastic dining table as we have on our terraces in the Balkans. They look like this, only dark green.
I’ve been reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential throughout the summer, and a good amount of my time was spent watching his Parts Unknown, too. So who I imagine joining me for a meal is none other than that eccentric cookie. No pretense, no camera, no rush; I wonder what that conversation would be like.
Anyway, I’m left with this book in front of me, and as I’m flipping through the pages, I light a cigarette in Bourdain’s name and dive in.
Kitchen Confidential
In this book, he is still alive. He still is. It’s a weird experience meeting Bourdain in retrospect. It’s especially strange to read thoughts about life in Kitchen Confidential. Since this isn’t one of his works of fiction, I hesitate to draw a stronger line between his life, what we know now, and the words on paper when drawing my conclusions about the book.
“I’m just an old-time cookie with a chip on his shoulder and a heart full of envy.”
Anthony Bourdain
I took my time reading it, but mostly because I needed breaks from the macho talk of Kitchen Confidential. The culinary scene of KC, as Bourdain later notices himself, is changing (and evolving?). By today, it has probably changed twice over. But I wouldn’t know about it. I’m not in that world. I’ve only now got a glimpse into a world that no longer is. Or maybe it does exist, but now you wouldn’t be able to talk about it the way you could back then. Or maybe that’s entirely Bourdain’s specialty, a voice unique to him that cannot be reproduced.
Kitchen Confidential is laid out as a full-course meal, and as such, I enjoyed it. Every course had just the right amount of zest. Is it the travel inspiration/guide it’s promoted as today? Weeeell…
I’ve noticed the rise in “bourdainesque-travel-aesthetic”. That’s how Kitchen Confidential showed up on my radar. But it feels like his lessons went over everyone’s heads, because I can’t imagine how today’s content-curation-oriented traveller can accurately recreate Bourdain’s cynical, unfiltered, connection-seeking, completely engulfed-in-food-and-culture approach. What can this book really teach someone about traveling or food?
Is it an interesting read? Yes! Will it gross you out? Maybe just a tiny little bit. Will you feel all the heat of the kitchen ovens and stuffy air that has nowhere to go, suffocating you through the pages as if you were on the line there? I sure did. But did it teach me anything about travel? Not really. It was a vent chronicle stretching years about one man’s love – food.
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Your closing point really lands — the ‘bourdainesque aesthetic’ gets endlessly copied, but his actual approach was messy, cynical and completely uncurated, which is the opposite of a content strategy. The plastic terrace table with the ashtray sets the whole mood perfectly. Kitchen Confidential really is best read as a vent chronicle, not a travel guide.
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Thank you for commenting! I feel like we just live in a overly saturated, content-oriented society (granted that I understand that this is a lot of people’s job) where we redefined what authenticity means itself. Spontaneous exploration gives way to carefully polished content strategy. Everything gets filtered through the camera lens.
Terrace table is a place where you can have a simple and light meal with your friends and family, or just light a cigarette or sip coffee. It’s a very casual setting, relaxing, and I feel like it coincides with what Bourdain said about plastic stools and a bowl of delicious food.
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