Since six weeks or so I’m back in the trustworthy chef’s wear. After graduating from my former bachelor, I decided I wanted to work a few months back in the kitchen. Why? I can’t really explain.
The catering business always had a certain charm on me. It has always been a bit of underdog compared to other industries. Salaries aren’t high, you have long shifts, it’s hard on your physique and alcohol is always around the corner. However, serving food you worked hard on for the past couple of days and seeing the customers enjoy gives just one of the best feelings in the world. It’s one of our oldest gestures as mankind, giving food to others. Yet it is still so modern and often the importance of it overlooked.
Another reason why I decided to get back in the kitchen is because it is “easy” work in some form. Don’t get me wrong, working in a kitchen is very very though. If your mise en place isn’t ready before the service starts or if you don’t cut the chives like you chef demands you’ll be in deep shit. Pressure and expectations are always high and to be honest, not everybody is cut out for it. What I mean by easy work is the following:
“People confuse me. Food doesn’t.”
Food will always behave the same, people don’t. I like working with people but it often gets complicated for reasons I can’t understand. Food will always behave the same if you get your steps right. The person who showed me this goes by the name of Anthony Bourdain and for this Edit I would like to look at his past life.
Early life
Anthony was born in Manhatten, New York in 1956. His parents (Gladys Sacksman and Pierre Bourdain) divorced a few years after Anthony was born. The paternal grandfathers of Anthony were of French origins. His father lived half his life in France and was also capable of speaking French.
Traditions remain faithful and Anthony would visit France many times during his rebellious young life with his father. In Normandy, he found love for the French kitchen and food in general by gulping an oyster. This moment is described in his book Kitchen Confidential.
“I took it in my hand, tilted the shell back into my mouth as instructed by the by-now-beaming Monsieur Saint-Jour, and with one bite and a slurp, wolfed it down. It tasted like seawater… of brine and flesh… and somehow… of the future. I’d not only survived – I’d enjoyed. This, I knew, was the magic I had until now only dimly and spitefully aware of. I was hooked.”
In the years that followed Anthony challenged himself to try the most extravagant, ugly-looking, and lesser favorite dishes. He dropped out of his secondary school and started working in his first kitchen in Provincetown, Massachusetts as a dishwasher. The restaurant name was The Dreadnought.
The Chefs Life
In this kitchen he fell in love with the catering business, seeing big colossal men with cuts and burn marks on their hands banging around pots and pans. A couple of years later Bourdain attended The Culinary Institute of America, graduating in 1978.
“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.”
After graduation, it was time to work and put the new attainted knowledge to use. Bourdain worked at various restaurants in New York the following years as line-cook, chef de partie and sous-chef. In 1998, Bourdain became an executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles. Les Halles was a franchise that next to New York had locations in Miami, Washington D.C. and Tokyo.
The Writers Life
Next to cooking, Bourdain had a passion for writing. Around 1990, he met the editor of Random House book publishers and received a small book advance from them in order to write his first book. His first book was called Bone in the Throat (1995), a blunt-spoken mystery murder novel with a lot of dark humor.
His follow-up book was called ‘Gone Bamboo,’ which is also a crime, mystery novel filled with witty jokes. Gone Bamboo was published 2 years after is book debut Bone in Throath. Unfortenately, both books did not perform well in sales.
“The way you make an omelet reveals your character."
In 2000, Bourdain struck gold. His life would change completely, all because of one book, Kitchen Confidentials; Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. This book is a memoir of Bourdains life and offers a deep look at the behind-the-scenes of restaurant kitchens. It reveals the often disgusting environments where chefs sling out expensive meals for high-paying customers and is full of kitchen horror stories like owners who linger by their doors for days, driving off potential customers with their desperation.
“To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living."
For those who haven’t worked in the catering business the book gives an in-debt look at the industry in a way you’ve never seen the industry before. For those who have worked in the catering business, this book feels like a warm bath.
After this success more books by Bourdain appeared. In 2010 the follow up for Kitchen Confidentials was published, the title was: Medium Raw; A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook. In 2006, Bourdain published The Nasty Bits, a collection of 37 exotic, provocative, and humorous anecdotes and essays, many of them centered around food, and organized into sections named for each of the five traditional flavors.
The TV-Host Life
This is how I became familiar with Anthony Bourdain, through the multiple TV-series he hosted. His first show was called a Cook’s Tour. A Cook's Tour, which premiered in January 2002 and ran for 35 episodes, through 2003. In this series he travels from country to country in order to seek inspiration for new recipes back at Les Halles. Bourdain described the concept as, "I travel around the world, eat a lot of shit, and basically do whatever the fuck I want."
In July 2005, he premiered a new, somewhat similar television series, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, on the Travel Channel. In No Reservations, Anthony not only focused on the cuisine of the respective country but also the culture. Because of this Bourdain attracted more viewers. The show premiered in 2005 and concluded its nine-season run with the series finale episode (Brooklyn) on November 5, 2012. The special episode Anthony Bourdain in Beirut that aired between Seasons 2 and 3 was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Programming in 2007.
In July 2011, the Travel Channel announced adding a second one-hour, 10-episode Bourdain show to be titled The Layover, which premiered November 21, 2011. Each episode featured an exploration of a city that can be undertaken within an air travel layover of 24 to 48 hours. The series ran for 20 episodes, through February 2013.
“You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together."
In May 2012, Bourdain announced that he was leaving the Travel Channel. It was due to his frustration with the channels new ownership using his voice and image as if he were endorsing a car brand, and the channel's creating three "special episodes" consisting solely of clips from the seven official episodes of that season. And so he left Tracel Channel and went to CNN. A new series was created with the name of, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown for CNN. The program focused on other cuisines, cultures and politics and premiered on April 14, 2013.
The End
“There are few things I care about less than coffee. I have two big cups every morning: light and sweet, preferably in a cardboard cup. Any bodega will do. I don’t want to wait for my coffee. I don’t want some man-bun, Mumford and Son motherfucker to get it for me. I like good coffee but I don’t want to wait for it, and I don’t want it with the cast of Friends. It’s a beverage; it’s not a lifestyle.”