A Book A Week - Week 28: Kitchen Confidential

This week's book:
   Kitchen Confidential  by Anthony Bourdain

Grade: A+

You want to know the best way to make people like you?  Engage their nostalgia.  I'm sure Mr. Bourdain did not have my nostalgia in mind when he wrote this book thirteen years ago, but he fed it and nurtured it nonetheless.  It doesn't hurt that he's a particularly good writer, too.

Flashback to... dear God, twenty-four years ago.  Holy crap.  Fresh out of college, I didn't have a car, job prospects across the country were miserable for anyone my age, and I was back living with my parents.  I took a job as a waiter for two reasons:  1) they agreed to hire me and 2) I could walk to work.
   I slaved as a waiter and prep cook for nearly four years, even after I had secured a much better job, because it was hard to leave 'the life.'  It really is hard, trust me.  My friend Mike says the restaurant business is like a toilet that will not flush, the turds just keep going around and around and around.  He's dead right.

'Kitchen Confidential' is the author's memoir, at least up to that point in his life.  Some stuff has happened to him since then.  And I have no doubt that everything in it is absolutely, 100% true.  Because I have similar stories, minus the astonishing substance abuse.  He was a child of the 70's, after all.

I have to be careful, because every time I think about a scene in the book it sparks a similar memory of my own time at the restaurant, and things rapidly devolve into 'good times, good times' thoughts and I want to call my friends and ask them if they 'remember when...?'

Mr. Bourdain has had at least two shows on cable TV so far - that I know of - and chances are good if you haven't watched either of them you've at least heard of him.  He writes like he speaks in those shows.  Or he speaks how he writes, whatever.  The cadence is familiar, and despite his lower-class leanings, he did go to Vassar.  For a while.  He knows how to write well and how to engage his reader, is what I'm saying here.

Mr. Bourdain's writing and his unvarnished opinions are delicious, savory bits of literary accomplishment that leave a reader fat and happy.  Here's my very favorite from this book:
     Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.
     That's what you're signing up for when you decide to read this book.  I love it.

Who should read this book?  Anyone who's ever worked in the restaurant business, of course, because you'll see that things are the same all over.  But, more importantly, I think everyone who has never worked in a restaurant needs to read this book.  Especially those of you who think that you want to be a chef, or own a restaurant or catering business or cupcake store or hamburger stand or what have you, because the author tells it like it is.  This is really, truly, the way life in a restaurant is.  It's not glamorous, it's gross, and you deal with thieves and lowlifes and horrible people all day, every day, 365 days a year.  And that's just the kitchen staff, the waiters and bartenders and customers are even worse.  Read it, and if you still want to be in the restaurant business after you turn the last page then you're made of stern stuff indeed.  Good luck. 
 

Next week:
 The Ocean at the End of the Lane  by Neil Gaiman
 Mr. Gaiman can write a comic book, that's for sure.  And I dimly recall reading 'American Gods' a few years back.  But his most recent TV outing was, hands-down, the worst episode of 'Dr. Who' I've ever seen, and that show's been in production for decades, there are stinkers a-plenty.  I hope he does a better job with this book than he did with The Doctor.