Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“That cold soup stayed with me. It resonated, waking me up, making me aware of my tongue and, in some ways, preparing me for future events.”

Bourdain cites an early experience eating vichyssoise, a cold soup, as the beginning of his culinary journey. That soup could be served cold was a revelation to Bourdain, and it made him realize that there was a whole world of food beyond his normal fare. Although his road to “chefdom” was complex, this one dining experience still stands out to him, decades later, as the first instance in which he realized that food could be a truly amazing experience.

“Scrubbing pots and pans, scraping plates and peeling mountains of potatoes, tearing the little beards off mussels, picking scallops and cleaning shrimp did not sound or look attractive to me. But it was from these humble beginnings that I began my strange climb to chefdom.”

Much of this book is dedicated to the daily grind of working in a restaurant kitchen, developing the theme of Food, Passion, and Professionalism as the most important motivators for a professional cook or chef. In addition to hoping that he can provide restaurant patrons with a glimpse into an unknown world, Bourdain also wants to sing the praises of the hardworking people who do jobs that are not glamorous. He hopes that the dishwashers, prep cooks, and line cooks who read this book will see him as a kindred spirit and feel a sense of pride in what they do.

“I had my diploma. I was now a graduate of the best cooking school in the country, a valuable commodity on the open market, and I had field experience, a vocabulary, and a criminal mind. I was a danger to myself and others.”

Bourdain is interested in shining a light on what he terms “restaurant subculture.” The people he worked with in kitchens were often foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, social misfits with a passion for food. Bourdain fit right into this culture and knew from his first few days in a restaurant that he had found his calling. Here, he returns to the restaurant he fell in love with the previous summer, armed with a new culinary degree. He hopes to hone his skills and prove his mettle amongst the professionals who laughed at him the previous year for requesting a bandage after burning himself.

“Dmitri was, like me, a born snob.”

Dmitri is one of Bourdain’s key influences. The two meet at the Dreadnaught, and Bourdain is instantly drawn to him. Dmitri is both an excellent cook and a tough guy, and Bourdain likens him to a young Hemingway. From Dmitri, he learns a wealth of new techniques, and the two start a catering business, the success of which prompts them to seek jobs in the higher-echelon restaurants in New York.

“Line cooking done well is a beautiful thing to watch.”

Bourdain has a tremendous amount of respect for the kitchen staff who do difficult, unglamorous jobs without much recognition from restaurant patrons, and one priority of his book is to give readers a look at “Street-Level” Cooking and Its Practitioners. Chefs are typically given credit for the food served at restaurants, although it is prepared almost entirely by a series of line cooks, each in charge of one aspect of food preparation. Part of the goal of this book is to shine a light on the work that line cooks do and to elevate their status in the eyes of readers and diners alike.

“Mis-en-place is the religion of all good line cooks.”

Bourdain is famous for the emphasis he places on mis-en-place, reflected in his metaphor of the “meez,” as he calls it elsewhere, as religion. While restaurant patrons typically think of restaurant food in terms of the finished product and the creativity that goes into menu development, Bourdain hopes to introduce readers to the skill and craft that goes into cooking, the kind of details that might not be evident to diners. A well-prepped station that allows cooks access to all the ingredients they need to prepare a dish allows for seamless cooking and continuity of flavor and presentation.

“Unless you’re one of us already, you’ll probably never cook like a pro, and that’s okay. On my day off, I rarely want to eat restaurant food.”

Bourdain has a passion for restaurant cooking and the kind of creativity that results in dishes diners might not have access to at home. Yet passion for food itself is at the root of his commitment to professional cooking. Because he appreciates cooking at multiple levels and in multiple styles, home-cooked food is just as beautiful and important to him as fine dining in restaurant settings.

“To want to own a restaurant can be a strange and terrible affliction.”

Many restaurants fail, and Bourdain includes an entire chapter about how easy it is for a restaurant to go under as a cautionary tale. Running a restaurant is a difficult job that requires more than ego or even love for a particular cuisine. When he refers to the desire to own a restaurant as “a strange and terrible affliction,” he likens it to an illness, one that the future restaurant owner cannot heal from.

“‘That’s not my job’ was not in the Bigfoot phrase book.”

Bigfoot is one of the chefs who influenced Bourdain the most. Although Bigfoot had superlative cooking skills, it is his jack-of-all-trades approach to running restaurants that impresses Bourdain the most. Bigfoot both knew how to and trained his staff to know how to address a wide range of problems from plumbing blockages to electrical work, and his approach is exemplified here with his quote’s understanding that there is nothing outside of his job description.

“We constructed our downstairs kitchen along familiar lines, as a faithful a re-creation of the kitchen we’d grown up in: insular, chaotic, drenched in drugs and alcohol and accompanied constantly by loud rock-and-roll music.”

Bourdain admits that there are problems with the restaurant world’s distinct subculture, but it is there that he feels the most at home. He doesn’t defend his drug use, but he does note that he has always felt like a social misfit and that he gravitates toward similar individuals. Because of his non-traditional approach to life, he creates a work atmosphere that is markedly different from one that most would label “professional.” Yet he has a strong work ethic, expects the same from his co-workers and employees, and turns out high-quality food night after night.

“What I learned at Tom’s was a sad lesson that has served me well in the decades since. I learned to recognize failure.”

This book provides an honest look at the restaurant industry, including both successes and failures. Bourdain might spend many of his shifts under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but he remains an industry expert, and that expertise is evident in his assessment of various restaurants and restaurateurs. He can easily point to the strengths and weaknesses of each establishment he works in, and over the years, fine-tunes his ability to foretell a restaurant’s future from only a cursory look at its day-to-day operations.

“It was the Big 80s time with all that implied: Too much money, too much coke.”

This book depicts the New York restaurant scene of the 1970s and ’80s, which gave way to a much more subdued version of itself. Bourdain’s nostalgia for this bygone era suffuses the book, and it is evident that he means this text as a love letter to an era in which norms were different, much more was permissible, and it was easier to be an outcast than it is today.

“My employment was running out, and the responses to the resumes I’d sent out invariably invited me to meet with such a transparently doomed bunch of chuckleheads that even I, the seasoned carrion-feeder, couldn’t stomach the prospect of working for them.”

Although serious at times, this book makes use of the dry wit that Bourdain became famous for, highlighted in this passage. Here, he pokes fun at both potential employers and himself. This, too, is typical of Bourdain’s work: He is equally comfortable lambasting those he knows and commenting on his own trajectory with self-deprecating snark.

“A simple pasta Pomodoro, just about the simplest thing I could think of, pasta in red sauce, suddenly became a thing of real beauty and excitement.”

Bourdain’s love for simple, fine ingredients is at the heart of his cooking philosophy. He often turns his nose up at chefs who use trendy techniques (he has a special hatred for foam) but is inspired by the beauty of excellent food, cooked simply. Here, although not a lover of Italian cuisine, he is swayed by a “basic” pasta dish and realizes that there is more to Italian food than he previously thought.

“The people coming to dinner tonight and Saturday night are different from the ones who eat at my restaurant during the week, and I have to take this into account. Saddle of wild hare stuffed with foie gras is not a good weekend special, for example.”

Bourdain’s insider advice is a key component of this book, illustrated here by his observation that weekday diners tend to be more adventurous. Those who eat out only once a week prefer more standard fare, a bit of knowledge that illustrates the depth of Bourdain’s experience and thoughtfulness about his work. This is helpful advice to both kinds of diners: The more adventurous now know that they might find specials more to their liking during the week, and those less acquainted with off-the-beaten-track dishes might prefer to stick to weekend dining.

“My sous-chef, in an ideal situation, is like my wife.”

The relationship between a head chef and his second-in-command is important, and Bourdain notes that he spends more time with his sous-chef than his actual wife. One of Bourdain’s key goals in writing this book was to shed light on the real behind-the-scenes operations of a restaurant kitchen, and he is especially committed to showing how important relationships are between various staff members. Cooking, he argues, is a collaborative art.

“As an art form, cook-talk is, like haiku or kabuki, defined by established rules with a rigid, traditional framework in which one can operate.”

Bourdain is also interested in providing readers with a window into what he calls cooking subculture, for good and for bad. In this section, he notes the preponderance of jokes about genitalia in restaurant kitchens but notes the artfulness of the insults by drawing a comparison to other art forms. Cooks are, he argues, a filthy-minded and filthy-mouthed bunch. Although they work hard, there is a distinctly jocular nature to the chit-chat that happens as they fill orders. Almost everyone’s tongues, Bourdain explains, are loosened by drugs, alcohol, and the camaraderie of a mostly male kitchen staff.

“I may have wanted Adam dead a thousand times over. I may have imagined, even planned his demise, torn apart by rabid dogs, his entrails snapped at by ravenous dachshunds, chained to a pillory post and flogged with chains and barbed wire before being drawn and quartered, but his bread and his pizza crust are simply divine.”

Bourdain is fond of hiring misfits and other individuals who take a hard-partying attitude toward life but are superlative cooks. With his introduction of Adam, a brilliant pastry chef, he gives insight into the difficulties of working with someone who is unreliable due to alcohol or substance use issues. Bourdain himself is cut from this cloth, and so he is willing to give a chance to people whose drinking and drug habits or uncouth language might make them less appealing to other chefs and hiring managers. Although Bourdain curses the baker, he will not fire him over this infraction: He is too good at his job.

“I appreciate people who show up every day and do the best that they can in spite of borderline personalities, substance abuse problems and anti-social tendencies, and I am often inclined to give them every opportunity to change their trajectories, to help them to arrive at a different outcome than the predictable one when they have begun to visibly unravel.”

Bourdain is a kind and compassionate man underneath his sarcastic, foul-mouthed veneer. Although he respects people who can hold their own in a kitchen while on drugs or hung over, his willingness to employ troubled cooks goes beyond industry camaraderie: He found direction through his career, and although he still drinks and uses drugs, he is well grounded in the restaurant industry. He hopes to be able to provide this same direction and grounding to others by employing them and giving them second chances when the need arises.

“I am fiercely protective of my crew, of my chain of command, of my turf.”

Bourdain values the collaborative nature of working in restaurant kitchens. To him, it emblematizes the difficulty of the job: Preparing food professionally is a multi-step process that involves the input of many different people in the kitchen. All those people must work together to produce consistent, quality food in a timely manner. He also values collaboration because he, as a self-described misfit, has found a group of like-minded individuals in the restaurant world. He views kitchen staff as his “tribe” and will do anything to help and support them.

“Cream rises. Excellence does have its rewards.”

Bourdain has a tremendous amount of respect for anyone in the restaurant world who works hard, but he does believe that the industry is a true meritocracy. He highlights that people like Thomas Keller and Eric Ripert, who gain celebrity status, succeed because they are truly the best of the best, illustrated by his comparison of them to the “cream” that rises to the top. Bourdain also shows his generosity and respect in this quote: He does not envy chefs who do well or even outperform him; rather, he commends them on their skill, talent, and dedication.

“There are different kind of kitchens than the kitchens I run.”

Here, Bourdain admits that his rag-tag crews of social misfits and party animals are not the only kind of kitchen crew in the business. Although he avows that his style of leadership works for him and that his dedication to other “lost souls” is and will always be unwavering, he admits that chefs who run tighter ships and tolerate fewer infractions and less bad behavior often achieve higher caliber results and are better respected in the restaurant industry.

“I did not want to leave. I had only begun to eat. There were a million restaurants, bars, temples, back alleys, neighborhoods, night clubs and markets to explore. Fully feeling the effects of the sake, I was seriously considering burning my passport.”

This section of the book, in which Bourdain discovers Tokyo, contains the seeds of his next passion: the intersection of cooking and travel. Although he spent decades as a chef, Bourdain became just as committed to traveling, trying new foods, and sharing that love with his viewers. He hoped that his television shows would inspire people to travel more and to eat more adventurously.