"Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly" by Anthony Bourdain

I first heard- and continue to hear- Anthony Bourdain's voice as it narrated his adventures on the Travel Channel's No Reservations. On the show Bourdain travels around the world, providing his take on local food, drink, culture, and drink. (Yes, I know I mentioned drink twice. So would Tony.) What struck me most about the show was Bourdain's honesty. When he was amazed or impressed by something or someone, he gave them due respect and was genuinely interested. When he found something disgusting or- even worse- boring, he let us know by smoking in the background and poking fun.

That raw honesty is the ugly/beautiful part of the book that made Bourdain famous, Kitchen Confidential. In the book he describes his career from making a few dollars at a seafood place to running the kitchen in New York's Les Halles, and all of the painful, sometimes psychotic, sometimes rewarding steps in between. The book is not really biography, but working in a restaurant is more than a job: it's a subculture, it's a duty, it's a life. So when Bourdain describes his work, he is describing the greater part of his life. And while doing so, his voice comes through crystal clear. Bourdain has an attitude and a way with words that are real and translate well off the page.

I personally identified with much of the book, even if I am not leading exactly the same life as the pirate-crew of cooks Bourdain often describes. Even before reading the book, I described my job/life to others as abnormal and necessarily separate from the people we were serving. When normal people eat dinner, we're working. When normal people go to bed, we're getting off work and having a drink. When normal people get up for work, we're often on somebody's floor. It's as base and strange as Bourdain describes, but it's ours, and in a sick way we're proud of it.

But, as usual, greater notions came to me through the book. As I said, I identify with parts of the book but I am not as dedicated to "The Life" as Tony and his crew are. They work longer hours, doing much harder work, for less pay. There's an entire culture of people who do their work every day with no immediate satisfaction other than a well-cooked plate of food that will be gone in twenty minutes. They don't have nice houses or their names in lights. They have their jobs and a place where they can say, "I do this well." And that's enough. There's more to the job than that, of course, some good and some bad, but that part of it, at least, has nobility to it.

As for Bourdain himself, he has long been a hero of mine. Reading about his drug-ridden past, great failures, and lessons hard-learned has not diminished this in the least. If anything it has only boosted my esteem. Someone who's gone through all of that and come out standing on the other side probably knows a thing or two.