Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Adam is Bourdain’s favorite baker. He is an eccentric character, and Bourdain notes that to employ him is to become “a full-time cop” (239). Like all of Bourdain’s favorites, he is a social misfit, deemed unemployable by many chefs. He is prone to multi-day alcohol binges and is equally happy doing hard drugs and drinking. He often disappears for several days on end, is always in the process of getting evicted from his apartment, and unleashes a constant stream of curses every time he opens his mouth. However, he is also the best baker Bourdain has ever met, and Bourdain is willing to put up with Adam’s behavior so that he can serve Adam’s creations. 

Like Bourdain, Adam has a true passion for good ingredients and good food, and he works in the industry in part because he sees his job as a form of artistic expression. He works with Bourdain for years, but he is also part of the closely knit group of chefs and cooks who bounce from restaurant to restaurant in New York. Once he no longer works for Bourdain, Bourdain comes across him frequently in friends’ kitchens. Bourdain notes on more than one occasion that although Adam has a wild, difficult personality, he is capable of extreme politeness and gets along with a wide range of people, including Bourdain’s wife, Nancy. He is a hard worker who, even when fired from one job and down on his luck, is always willing to start a new venture and give it his all.

Bigfoot is one of Bourdain’s most important influences. The two met at CIA, and even at that time, Bourdain notes, he was considered a “West Village legend, either loved or despised” by all who met him (90). Bourdain later goes to work for Bigfoot and is continuously impressed by what a superlative chef he is. 

Bigfoot is tall, broad, and still resembles the athlete that he was as a young man. He cuts an imposing figure both inside and outside of the kitchen, and he inspires awe in everyone who works for him. He has a genius-level understanding of food, flavor profiles, and various styles of preparation, and even when Bourdain feels confident about one of his recipes, he finds that Bigfoot can typically improve it somehow. Bigfoot also impresses Bourdain with his ability to maximize profits. He keeps stats on each of his workers so that he can better understand the way that they use ingredients. If one cook can squeeze an extra portion out of a fish, for example, he knows not to let anyone else portion out the daily seafood specials. Because Bourdain is increasingly aware of the skills that go into working as a chef that are unrelated to the actual cooking, he strives to run the kind of kitchens that Bigfoot did when he has his own restaurants.

Like Bourdain, Bigfoot has a jack-of-all-trades approach to running restaurants. He knows how to fix a range of common issues from broken plumbing to electrical work and even laying tile. Not wanting to have to pay or wait for a repair person, Bigfoot also trains his staff to be able to address these problems. This attitude commands a tremendous amount of respect from his employees, and despite his gruff personality, he has a loyal team. 

Bigfoot is also kind and generous. He gives Bourdain a job when Bourdain is fresh out of rehabilitation but is still using drugs. He generously loans Bourdain money, an act of kindness that Bourdain feels he must respond to with gratitude: If it had been someone else, he acknowledges, he might have taken the money, spent it on drugs, and not shown up for work. Bourdain finds inspiration in this kind of approach to managing people, too. Like Bigfoot, he hopes to inspire hard work and loyalty through a tough-love leadership style.

Bourdain notes that from Bigfoot, he learned how to stay in-the-know about his employees, how to gauge if they were happy or not, and to put out feelers at area restaurants to see if anyone is looking for a job. He learned that character is more important than skill because most skills can be taught. Bigfoot often took chances on people, knowing that if he found the right person, he could help them get back on track, no matter their issue. He was always willing to help staff with personal issues and had a cadre of lawyers, real estate agents, and other professionals he could call at a moment’s notice if one of his cooks was in need. Bourdain observes this behavior and follows Bigfoot’s system of management, realizing after working for Bigfoot that Bigfoot’s system was the way to run restaurants successfully without burning out.

In Bourdain’s opinion, Scott is a chef who “embodies the culinary ideal” (252). His approach to professional cooking is, Bourdain notes, quite different from his own. Unlike Bourdain’s affluent youth, Bryan grew up in the working class. They both had excellent training and did additional work in France early in their careers, but that is where their paths diverged. 

Scott was more calculating in his choices and opted for only the jobs that would further his career. He parlayed a series of high-profile jobs into a series of even more high-profile jobs and ended up opening restaurants that were both truly innovative in the style of food that they served and exacting in their culinary standards: Bourdain was impressed that their food was both beautifully plated and delicious. Scott is also knowledgeable about wine, and his menu reflects a keen eye toward interesting pairings. 

Scott’s kitchens are calm, quieter than Bourdain’s, and efficiently run, but the two men share a deep passion for good food and are often in agreement on which restaurants are serving the best dishes and even which dishes are top-of-the-line at each of the hottest spots of the moment. Bourdain’s respect for and friendship with Scott reflect his willingness to see other points of view, his appreciation for different styles of leadership, and his ability to find kindred spirits even amongst people whom he categorizes as markedly different from himself.

The author’s aunt and uncle make only a short appearance in the book, but they are instrumental in shaping his career. They live in France in La Teste du Buch, “a tiny oyster village” on the coast (14), in an old house with a red-tiled roof that Bourdain’s father also stayed in during the summer when he was a boy. Already “ancient” seeming to a young Bourdain, Tante Jeanne is “frumpy and bespectacled” (14), and Oncle Gustav wears dirty coveralls and smokes hand-rolled cigarettes. Through their influence, Bourdain tries his first oyster and many other French delicacies. 

To Bourdain, Tante Jeanne and Oncle Gustav come to represent the importance of good quality food and its accessibility to “ordinary” people in the French culinary tradition. Their love for excellent food becomes one of Bourdain’s foundational values, and he carries it with him into various professional kitchens in his work as a chef. Although he realizes that a complex constellation of factors led to his career, he traces his passion for food to the summer he spent in France with his family and to his first oyster, given to him while staying with Jeanne and Gustav.

Dmitri oversees the pasta station at the Dreadnaught and is one of Bourdain’s key early influences. Although the two worked together during Bourdain’s first summer there, it is not until Bourdain’s second summer that he is promoted to a position that puts him in contact with Dmitri. The son of a Russian father and a German mother, Dmitri is fluent in English, German, and Russian. He is an avid reader, loves the crossword puzzle, and is “fond of hyperbole and dramatic overstatement” (46). His larger-than-life personality reminds Bourdain of Hemingway, and in him Bourdain finds a kindred spirit: Bourdain and Dmitri share a passion for excellent food, an interest in language and literature, and a penchant for alcohol-fueled nights and days. 

Bourdain also feels a kinship with Dmitri’s snobbery. They are both exacting in their standards, and Bourdain is impressed with Dmitri’s attention to detail. With Dmitri, Bourdain launches his first catering business, and the first few jobs they land become a trial-by-fire that hones their skills and further cements their passion for professional cooking. Dmitri is also instrumental in teaching Bourdain technique and propelling him toward a higher echelon of restaurant.

According to Bourdain, Pino is “one of the most controversial figures in the business” (163). He is a skillful restaurateur who owns a fleet of restaurants. Bourdain goes to work for him after a long, difficult slump, and Pino’s Tuscan restaurant revives his interest in working and commitment to food. 

Although Pino has a reputation for difficulty, his passion for good, interesting food matches Bourdain’s, and Bourdain sees him as a kindred spirit. Like Bourdain, Pino is dedicated to the inclusion of “trash” fish in his menus and raises the profile of several perfectly edible varieties of seafood that have been badmouthed by many in the industry. Bourdain reads both of his books, A Tuscan in the Kitchen and Fish Talking, and finds them just as inspirational as Howard Mitcham’s. He also shares with Bourdain a deep appreciation for adventurous eating, and laments even his friends’ unwillingness to try new foods. 

Like many of Bourdain’s primary influences, Pino has a particular set of beliefs about cooking: He values underappreciated ingredients, simple preparations meant to let the quality of the food shine, and flawless technical skill in the kitchen. He also teaches Bourdain to appreciate Italian cuisine, a lesson for which Bourdain remains grateful for the duration of his career.

Bourdain meets Howard Mitcham while working at the Dreadnaught in Provincetown. The area is home to a large community of Portuguese immigrants, but the local cuisine rarely makes use of traditional Portuguese methods or ingredients. Even early in his career, Bourdain finds this problematic, and he is drawn to Mitcham in particular because he is one of the few local chefs to honor Portuguese culinary traditions in his recipes and menus. 

Mitcham is excited to use varieties of seafood that were seen, at that time, as “trash.” He produced high-quality dishes out of monkfish, squid, and other fish usually not served in restaurants, sparking Bourdain’s own commitment to similar principles. Bourdain details the way that Mitcham’s cookbooks shaped his early days in kitchens and still sees evidence of his influence in the New York food scene: He recalls reading a column in the New York Times in which the author notes her love for the Portuguese recipes of Provincetown, and he is sure that she’d eaten at one of Mitcham’s restaurants.