I Read Anthony Bourdain’s ‘Kitchen Confidential’.

I’m not a chef. I’m not a cook. I’ve never worked in a restaurant. I’ve just barely done a year and a half in “food and bev”. None of this matters. I’ve worked my ass off for three different companies over 15 years, and it wasn’t until I really hit that particular stride… it wasn’t until I was haphazardly put in charge of one of those businesses that I really understood what it meant to work. Everything before that was a job. I showed up, I did whatever the instructions of the day were, and I left. I never took my eye off the clock. I never thought about The Business or The Store. I rarely, if ever, thought about The Team, instead looking at those around me as friends or nothing. It wasn’t until I was in charge that these people became compatriots. That they became my shoulder-to-shoulder warriors, people I would go to bat for, people I would go down with the ship for as I was bailing out their lifeboats and getting them out of the way of disaster. These were my people. My team. And I think in this [legendary?] book by Anthony Bourdain, I start to hear a lot of my own voice in his words, his commitment and his sacrifices despite never setting foot on the back line of a restaurant.

Reading this book was an absolute joy. Not only does he have the descriptive language in the style that I adore (low to the ground, capable of seeing the shit from above, below, beside and around it, dirty nailed and aflame), he also knows how to slow his perceptive tongue and zoom out for the casual reader. I feel like that’s what this book did so well. It spoke to chefs, line cooks, critics and diners equally as well throughout. It got you inside the restaurant, under the building, beside the pots and pans, and sat at the table, all at the same pace, the same attentiveness. Every aspect of the food world was haloed and included. Now, I have to mention here: I am not an avid eater. I don’t like food. I don’t find restaurants exciting. I don’t get excited to go to a restaurant. I don’t know how to cook. I look up air fryer directions on google. These things don’t MATTER to me. I’ve long said that I would love to install a Soylent faucet in my kitchen and fill a glass three times a day and check Feeding off the list. And this book was still a marvel. It’s not the food, it’s Bourdain.

Between his war stories of callous restauranteurs, wild sous chefs, miraculous trips to Japan was Anthony Bourdain, grinding away and working his ass off to survive and to make a buck. And the best thing about this book is that throughout the entire adventure, before success, during and even after, he is mentioning His People. The people that he can depend on when he leaves for the small hours of the night to recharge. He mentioned the people that he can trust when he is pressed to the wall and needs to fight his way out tooth and nail. He mentions their small miracles, their artisanal skills despite their sadistic personalities. He mentions their beauty. He mentions it casually in the same paragraph as he talks about being deep in the weeds, in a hellscape of orders and specialty requests and nightmare understaffing issues. He talks about His People with reverence. With gratitude. With joy. I think about him smirking as he writes line after line, knowing that this person might never read his book, but the stories told will be able to make his subject a legend.

I’ve worked in much the same way as Bourdain for much of my life. Never drinking the kool-aid of leadership, never buying too deeply in corporate mission statements or inherent values. I’ve never bought their slogans, their three line catchphrases. I’ve never bled the color of whatever font they print above the door. But I have strived to make every job I work for, to make every team I lead believe that they are working for the best boss they’re going to find and I’ll be damned if anyone, if anyone above or below me says that I am not married to the day-to-day grind of the business, to the needs of my coworkers, to the absolute top satisfaction of my customer. And in every chapter from this book, I got the same sense from Bourdain. He never showed up for some proprietor or owner or manager. He showed up for Himself, and he showed up for Them. Them the people who agreed to work beside him, Them the people who found beauty in the chaotic blue-collar grind, Them who wanted a thriving life outside of the way that they earned the means to do so. There was no job too low, no peak too high, and he was going to leave the details out for each individual member of his kitchen, because he was going to strive for it and he was going to drag the rest of them with him.

I’m not sure what this book is for others. But for me, it feels like a working man’s bible. It feels like the kind of voice I needed for a long time, to know that I wasn’t just spinning my tires and getting nowhere. I’ll never be Anyone. I’ll never be someone who is remembered by name, or by a specific dish or a specific drink or a result of any particular craft. I’ll never be Anthony Bourdain. But I will always show up. I will always make the moment right. I will always commit to my fellow workers. I will always be there for a good time, no matter how busy we are. Like I tell so many of my hires, especially the ones who are going to hold the keys, who are going to run my shifts. We’re gonna have the best day, and if we’re not gonna have the best day we’re going to have a good time, and if we’re not going to have a good time, at least we’ll be able to laugh about it together.

I realize I’ve injected a lot of myself into this “Review”. It’s not something I wanted to do at the outset of this. I really do want to celebrate this book. His accounts of the NYC restaurant trade are incredibly interesting, from the way that he orders his food in to the way that he traveled in many of the same circles of people who tried to run the restaurant business and how each of the people, each of the tiers of the people knew about each other. There was a veritable Game-of-Thrones-level of politics in knowing who you worked for, what kind of job you did, and how you left, and how often you’d be able to come back. His passion and love for food is palpable throughout as we hear him discuss bread as if it were a renaissance work of art, and even the most basic of meals from his childhood as something that can rock him to his core (much like the critic from Ratatouille). His descriptions of the fish markets in Manhattan and all the way to Tokyo make it feel like must-visit, destination mayhem. Smells, sights, humanity all balled into a veritable highball to smash down and move on to another. Above all, you do not have to be in the restaurant industry to enjoy the way he talked about it, or to enjoy the way he talked about life.

The chapter ‘A Day In the Life’ will forever be a landmark moment of my life in reading, one where everything felt right, everything read beautifully, and I could simultaneously see the characters, the author, the setting and myself all at once. Beautifully done.

This was my intro to Bourdain, and I’ll be sure to watch his television show, along with the documentary about his life. It makes me sad now to know that he’s no longer with us, a tragic figure with so much to say about the world around him, an observant nature that he was able to alchemize into a brilliant brew of words with which to share the way he saw the world. I have friends who have long loved him who I will absolutely be reaching out to.

This was also my introduction to the Libby app, and it wasn’t until about 80% through listening the book that I realized you could also borrow the digital copy of the book to read as well. Listening just wasn’t satisfying the speed at which I wanted to devour this book at, so I was stoked to be able to get in there and get my eyes on the prize.

I cannot recommend this book any higher. Read it right away.