Book review: "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain

As a young cook at a New York restaurant, Anthony Bourdain was tormented in the kitchen by a more senior, and often drunk, chef named Luis.

"Luis considered frequent explorations of my young ass with his dirty paws to be a perk of his exalted position; at every opportunity, he'd take a running swat between my cheeks, driving his fingers as far up my ass as my checked pants would allow," Bourdain writes in his 2000 book, "Kitchen Confidential. "I endured this in the spirit of good fun for a while — until I'd had enough."

One day in the kitchen, Bourdain spotted Luis approaching out of the corner of his eye. He casually grabbed a big meat fork and, when Luis's fast-moving hand approached his butt cheeks, Bourdain drove the fork's tines deep into his assailant's hand.

"Luis screamed like a burning wolverine and fell to his knees, two wide holes — one on each side of his middle knuckle — already welling up with blood. He managed to get up, the whole kitchen crew screaming and hooting with laughter, his hand blowing up to the size of a catcher's mitt and taking on an interesting black-and- blue and red color."

Not only did this end the assaults, it improved Bourdain's work status. "The other cooks began addressing me as an equal. Nobody grabbed my ass anymore. People smiled and patted me on the back when I came to work in the morning. I had made my bones."

This is one of many terrific stories Bourdain tells in "Kitchen Confidential." The book covers some 27 years of Bourdain's culinary career, starting as a dishwaher at a seafood place in Massachusetts, then moving on to chef roles at literally dozens of other restaurants, mostly in New York.

Bourdain shows us what really goes on in a restaurant's kitchen, and it's often not a pretty picture. He describes a snarl of barely organized chaos filled with cooks and staff shouting, cursing, trading insults in multiple languages, arguing, complaining about customers, stealing, and, at any spare moment, having sex with the wait staff, getting drunk, or doing drugs. 

It may be unruly, but it's also part of an intricate dance that puts your meal on your plate. Long before you arrive at a restaurant, Bourdain explains, chefs are busy ordering food, sharpening knives, planning the menu, roasting bones for stock, making sauces, dividing meat into portions, and managing deliveries.

Bourdain laments that he rarely had time to check the quality of the food at delivery, but notes, "My purveyors know me as a dangerously unstable and profane rat-bastard, so if I don't like what I receive, they know I'll be on the phone later, screaming at them to come and 'Pick this shit up!'"

It's hard, all-consuming work — Bourdain describes frequently working 12- to 16-hour days, pushing out hundreds of meals a day. After 27 years, his hands and arms are scarred from burns and knife cuts. There's an emotional toll, too, as Bourdain has to manage changing demands from the owner and compete with rivals in the kitchen. 

But all in all he loved it. He loved it because he loved great food and loved to prepare it.

"I enjoy the look on the face of my boss when I do a potau-feu special — the look of sheer delight as he takes the massive bowl of braised hooves, shoulders and tails in, the simple boiled turnips, potatoes and carrots looking just right, just the way it should be," he says, describing just one of his favorite dishes.

Bourdain is a strong writer, as well as an opinionated one. He calls vegetarians "the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food."

Weekend diners, he says, "are universally viewed with suspicion, even contempt, by both cooks and waiters alike; they're the slackjaws, the rubes, the out-of-towners, the well-done-eating, undertipping, bridge-and-tunnel pre-theater hordes, in to see Cats or Les Miz and never to return."

For all its great stories, "KItchen Confidential" is unevenly cooked. There are chapters that don't fit, like one in which gives his advice on kitchen tools and garnishes, and another where he profiles other chefs. Those belong in other books. 

Worse, Bourdain overstays at his table. His brash opinions and cocky attitude are entertaining for much of the book, but eventually become repetitive and tiresome. There's just a little too much Anthony Bourdain in Anthony Bourdain's book. (It's telling that when I was 90% done with this book, I actually put it aside and read another book in its entirety. I eventually came back and finished "Kitchen Confidential," but not because I was eager to read more; I just wanted to finish it.)

So read the good stuff, but prepared to say when you've had enough. 

 

Book review: "438 Days" by Jonathan Franklin

In the pantheon of epic survival stories, a handful of names stand out. There's Ernest Shackleton, the  Antarctic explorer. There's Louis Zamperini, the protagonist of the book and movie "Unbroken." There's Alexander Selkirk, the real-life inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. 

To that list, you might want to add the name José Salvador Alvarenga.

In his excellent 2015 book "438 Days," author Jonathan Franklin tells the incredible story of  how Alvarenga got caught in a raging storm while fishing off Mexico's West Coast, was pushed far out to sea, and managed to survive for more than 14 months in the Pacific Ocean on a small boat with a dead motor and few supplies.

Alvarenga "completed one of the most incredible voyages in the storied history of seafaring," writes Franklin. "He didn't navigate, sail, row or paddle — he drifted."

Franklin shows how the 37-year-old Alvarenga, who was poor and had little formal education, used his wits and experience to survive. He created a fish hook from an engine part. He drank turtle blood. He sewed mocassins from shark skin. He used floating trash, making fish traps from old bleach bottles and using old beverage containers to collect rainwater. He used his urine, as his mother had taught him, to treat an ear infection (don't laugh — the ear got better). 

For the first part of the ordeal, Alvarenga was accompanied by 24-year-old Ezequiel Córdoba, who Alvarenga had hired at the last minute to help him on his fishing trip. Córdoba survived on little food and water for four months — pretty impressive in itself — before dying. 

With no one to talk to from then on, Alvarenga's survival involved mental games. He befriended a whale shark that swam by his boat for several days, talking out loud to it. He played "soccer" with the birds he had trapped live on his boat, using a puffer fish as the ball. He drifted in and out of fantasy worlds, imagining himself brewing coffee or cooking special meals. At night, he would pretend to reach up and turn off the light.

In writing the book, Franklin faced a notable limitation: He really only had one source, Alvarenga himself. 

Franklin notes in the afterword that he interviewed Alvarenga many times over a year, fleshing out his story and, importantly, checking for inconsistencies. Franklin also talked to Alvarenga's friends and fellow fishermen to understand his back story..

Franklin smartly supplements the story with interviews with experts on survival, oceanography, marine weather patterns, climates, and fishing, bringing valuable perspective to the story (did you know that fish eyeballs can be an important source of vitamin C, helping prevent scurvy?). 

In the end, Alvarenga's story holds together, partly because he's so open about how traumatic it was. He recalls spending evenings talking to the ocean: 

"When, oh when, are you going to get me out of here?" he would ask. "I must be a bother. Toss me ashore."

Alvarenga is eventually tossed ashore in the Marshall Islands after a voyage of about 6,000 miles.  Franklin recounts how the severely weakened Alvarenga ate voraciously after reaching land. Alvarenga despised the press that pestered him for his story and the doctors who wanted to poke and prod him.

Wrote Franklin: "Alvarenga believed he didn't need a doctor to diagnose what was wrong. He was suffering from a yearlong tortilla drought. Nearly every day of his journey to sea he had imagined toasted tortillas. During his two weeks in the Marshall Islands he begged for corn tortillas but was told to wait, that no one ate tortillas in the middle of the Pacific."

When Franklin asked Alvarenga why he was cooperating with him on writing the book, he said he wanted to help others.

"I suffered so much and for so long. Maybe if people read this they will realize that if I can make it, they can make it. Many people suffer only because of what happens in their head; I was also physically being tortured. I had no food. No water. If I can make it so can you. If one depressed person avoids committing suicide then the book is a success."