Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential
This book is hilarious, full of an infectious lust for life. An enjoyable read so far. I found this at Half Price Books yesterday; they somehow had absolutely no Hemingway (which is what I came for) but I did find this and a pristine copy of Mishima's Frolic of the Beasts, so I came out okay in the end.
As a millennial and a professional food writer, I can say this book changed our industry forever. It changed food writing in a huge way, from a stuffy old thing for gourmets to compare notes into a visceral, blood-and-guts thing that could be
cool rather than elite. It changed the restaurant business in many specific ways - for example, because of Bourdain's comments on when to order fish, restaurants have changed what days they order their fish.
There is also a somewhat strong backlash in the industry against the type of angry, drug/alcohol-fueled, unprofessional kitchen work environments which are depicted in the book. Bourdain was criticized by some as the poster boy (along with Gordon Ramsay and his cursing), but he clearly does not glamorize or glorify it...or at least in his later years, on the TV show, he stopped doing that. Oh, an interesting note for you - the character "Jimmy Sears" in the book is in real life a chef named John Tesar, who lives here in Dallas and whom I've interviewed, met, and reviewed. Tesar is 63 now and hasn't changed very much since Jimmy Sears in the book; he's still a gloriously good chef, a grade-A schmoozer, and a guy who can't stay in the kitchen because he's busy chasing women. (Tomorrow he has a hearing in a custody battle over the kid he had in his late 50s with a 20-something waitress at his own restaurant...if that gives you an idea...
)
I got the Globe 8" chef knife Bourdain recommends in the book and I love it. Have been using it daily for 8 years or so now.
