Left - Mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Right - Sane & compassionate commentator on food and culture. I've been off the air for a few weeks (in more ways than one). I've been taken up with hospitality training and evaluation. I also had a break in Tasmania, but more of that later. But no sooner am I back at the keyboard than I have to deal with the sad loss of another hero. Vale Anthony Bourdain. He died while filming in France, 8th June, 2018. So sad for us that he needed so drastically to be free of his demons.
He had graduated in 1978 from the American Culinary Institute. He was executive chef at the Brasseries Les Halles in New York when he came to prominence in 2000, with the publication of his best-seller, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, a deep-down and dirty story about the parts of a restaurant no-one wants to see and a homage to those who make the place happen, the chefs and line cooks. It was not a pretty picture. It was also probably the most foul-mouthed book you will ever read. I religiously recommended it to every cook, chef or dishwasher who came through our restaurant kitchen. It was compassionate, unflinching and full of realistic advice for anyone thinking of going into hospitality - and a far cry from the glory and pretty stories of magazine food pages. And as a “Little Goody Two Shoes”, while I didn’t (and don’t) relate to the casual and frantic sex in the cool-room or on the stuffed bags of soiled linen in the passage, or the smack or lines of cocaine to get through the day, I grabbed at the plain, sane, essential advice for the kitchen - show up on time, keep your station clean and in order; the kitchen is a dangerous place. Furthermore, I related to his thinking about food and the significance of sharing. Perhaps it’s best to simply offer some random quotes. “Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.” “Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don't have.” “Don't lie about it. You made a mistake. Admit it and move on. Just don't do it again. Ever” “Don't touch my dick, don't touch my knife.” (Sorry about that one, but you get his drift.) “Few things are more beautiful to me than a bunch of thuggish, heavily tattooed line cooks moving around each other like ballerinas on a busy Saturday night. Seeing two guys who'd just as soon cut each other's throats in their off hours, moving in unison with grace and ease, can be as uplifting as any chemical stimulant or organized religion.” “Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime. Please, treat your garlic with respect. Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screw-top jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don't deserve to eat garlic.” “For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we've all become disappears, when we're confronted with something as simple as a plate of food.” “So who the hell, exactly, are these guys, the boys and girls in the trenches? You might get the impression from the specifics of my less than stellar career that all line cooks are wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts and psychopaths. You wouldn't be too far off base. The business attracts 'fringe elements', people for whom something in their lives has gone terribly wrong. Maybe they didn't make it through high school, maybe they're running away from something, be it an ex-wife, a rotten family history, trouble with the law, a squalid Third World backwater with no opportunity for advancement. Or maybe, like me, they just like it here. ” “The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator, somebody with ideas of his own who is going to mess around with the chef's recipes and presentations. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield conditions.” “Our movements through time and space seem somehow trivial compared to a heap of boiled meat in broth, the smell of saffron, garlic, fish-bones and Pernod.” “If you look someone in the eye and call them a ‘fat, worthless, syphilitic puddle of badger crap’ it doesn’t mean you don’t like them. It can be – and often is – a term of endearment.” “Having a sous-chef with excellent cooking skills and a criminal mind is one of God's great gifts.” “Cooking is a craft, I like to think, and a good cook is a craftsman, not an artist. There's nothing wrong with that: the great cathedrals of Europe were built by craftsmen, though not designed by them. Practising your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable and satisfying.” “Food had power. It could inspire, astonish, shock, excite, delight and impress. It had the power to please me.” “Luck is not a business plan.” His writing and TV programs around the world were brave and revealing. He put so easily into words what I believe (with more expletives that I’ve ever used). His heroes are my heroes, his villains my villains. “I am not a fan of people who abuse service staff. In fact, I find it intolerable. It’s an unpardonable sin as far as I’m concerned, taking out personal business or some other kind of dissatisfaction on a waiter or busboy.” “We know, for instance, that there is a direct, inverse relationship between frequency of family meals and social problems. Bluntly stated, members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to stick up liquor stores, blow up meth labs, give birth to crack babies, commit suicide, or make donkey porn. If Little Timmy had just had more meatloaf, he might not have grown up to fill chest freezers with Cub Scout parts.” “Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.” “As incisively pointed out in the documentary Food Inc.," an overwhelmingly large percentage of "new," healthy," and "organic" alternative food products are actually owned by the same parent companies that scared us into the organic aisle in the first place. "They got you comin' and goin' " has never been truer.” “These are the end products of the Masterminds of Safety and Ethics, bulked up on cheese that contains no cheese, chips fried in oil that isn’t really oil, overcooked gray disks of what might once upon a time have been meat, a steady diet of Ho-Hos and muffins, butterless popcorn, sugarless soda, flavorless light beer. A docile, uncomprehending herd, led slowly to a dumb, lingering, and joyless slaughter.” “I'm asked a lot what the best thing about cooking for a living is. And it's this: to be a part of a subculture. To be part of a historical continuum, a secret society with its own language and customs. To enjoy the instant gratification of making something good with one's hands - using all one's senses. It can be, at times, the purest and most unselfish way of giving pleasure (though oral sex has to be a close second).” His life had imperfections and on re-reading “Medium Raw” one senses an unease and depression, even an omen, despite his addictions being safely locked away in the past. “Only one in four has a chance at making it. And right there, I knew that if one of us was getting off dope, and staying off dope, it was going to be me. Iwas going to live. I was the guy.” “I'll be right here. Until they drag me off the line. I'm not going anywhere. I hope. It's been an adventure. We took some casualties over the years. Things got broken. Things got lost. But I wouldn't have missed it for the world.” I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time. My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered.” Of the still prevalent macho kitchen atmosphere and gender inequalities that lurk beneath the glamorous “celebrity” chef culture shown up by the #metoo movement, he said “I think about this daily with real remorse.” I recommend Medium Raw and give a copy of Kitchen Confidential to that niece or nephew who watches too much Master Chef (with perhaps a warning about the oral sex).
10 Comments
Roger
6/8/2018 05:22:40 pm
What a great article - what a great guy.
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Dale
23/8/2018 11:38:07 am
Brilliant thoughts from a very talented man. Thanks for sharing Cath.
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Leah Vincent
23/8/2018 11:51:38 am
Thanks for writing that Cath .. what pearls! Makes me want to buy the books.
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angela smail
24/8/2018 02:21:07 pm
Cath were have you gone,? have really enjoyed reading your blog. Hope to see some news soon.
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25/8/2018 06:04:17 pm
Thank you, Angela. After a pause of a few weeks to do a little job, I went on holiday (Paris, Iceland, Denmark) where I looked forward to writing and observing BUT my internet was terrible! I could receive but not send. All fixed now and just finishing the recipe for Queen's Pudding from "The Great British Bake Off" to post off.
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Angela Valamanesh
26/8/2018 11:51:10 am
Thanks for another great blog Cath. I didn't realise that Anthony Bourdain was such a great writer as well as chef / TV presenter and will make sure to put his books on my reading list. Best wishes, Angela
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26/8/2018 05:55:54 pm
Thank you Angela. Yes, but unfortunately a tortured soul, it seems. Try "Medium Raw".
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Stephanie
28/8/2018 03:45:00 pm
Agree with others -- good to have you back, Catherine! Thanks so much for the wonderful Anthony Bourdain quotes. I wish he had lived many more years to tell many more stories.
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Angela Burford
28/8/2018 11:59:38 pm
One of the most enjoyable road trips we have had (a long one) was accompanied by Anthony Bourdain's audio book narration of a Cook's Tour. It was a sensational way to gobble miles and to fall in love with this genius whose wit was savage and who oozed sensitivity and compassion which was all bought to life through his fabulous descriptions. I thought of him often during a holiday last year in his much loved Vietnam. After listening to him non-stop for hours on end he became the person I most wanted to sit next to at a dinner party. Not going to happen, it never was, but if I can unearth the CD's and find something to play them on II can still join him on his nocturnal tearing and dodging through the Russian countryside, sucking oysters in France and extolling
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29/8/2018 12:15:31 pm
Great information Angela. I love a talking book on a road trip and he'd be far better to listen to than the inevitable crime saga. Worth searching out some CDs which are still playable in our car..
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