58 pages • 1-hour read
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
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Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Second Course”
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary: “Who Cooks?”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use and addiction.
Who actually cooks food in restaurant kitchens? Most of the work, Bourdain explains, is done by line cooks. This is a difficult job that requires “character and endurance” (55). Although line cooks must be skilled, they should not be innovators: The chef sets the menu, and the line cooks make sure that the food is cooked the same way and to the same standards each time. Bourdain notes that it is mindless, repetitive work.
Bourdain says that most New York chefs prefer Ecuadorian, Mexican, or Dominican line cooks rather than culinary school-trained American workers. This is because “kids” fresh out of culinary school often want to innovate and take over the kitchen. Although undocumented immigrants were once common in kitchens, this is no longer the case: All the line cooks Bourdain hires are highly sought-after professionals, legally able to work in the United States. Bourdain has occasionally employed Americans, but they are rare. He also notes that kitchens are male-dominated, and the women who excel in that environment tend to be tough and able to shout and drink as much as their male counterparts.
Bourdain emphasizes the importance of mis-en-place, or the set-up at a cook’s station: Their supplies of salt, pepper, butter, oil, cooking wine, and other necessities become an “extension of their nervous system” (58), and every skilled line cook maintains their station at all times. The stations must always be kept clean, and line cooks hoard towels “like gold.”
He also cites a calm, even-keeled temperament as an asset to a line cook, especially during busy dinner rushes. Line cooks must get along well with others, as they often have to work collaboratively. Bourdain has always enjoyed working with misfits, and he argues that most people who end up in restaurant kitchens are misfits. He divides them primarily into three groups: artists working to finance their artistic endeavors, exiles who cannot “hack it” in other jobs, and mercenaries who are in it only for a paycheck.
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “From Our Kitchen to Your Table”
Bourdain reflects that there are many “things to be wary of in the food department,” but chief among them is “discount sushi” (64). He also cautions against ordering fish on Mondays, as most seafood is ordered to be served fresh for the weekend. Any fish that hasn’t been sold on a Monday has been in the restaurant for at least 4-5 days. Mussels are also tricky: They are typically stored in bins in their own excretions, making it easy for them to go bad and cause serious seafood poisoning. Bourdain recommends avoiding them unless you know the chef. He also cautions against ordering anything served with hollandaise sauce: It must be kept at a particular temperature to avoid breaking and thus is a veritable “petri dish” for potential bacterial growth.
He goes on to say that brunch, in general, is cooked by the “B-Team” and is a great way to unload unused food from the week. Bourdain also shares that it is routine practice to recycle uneaten bread into a new diner’s bread basket. This practice does not bother him, as it addresses the monumental issue of waste in the restaurant industry.
Never eat in a restaurant whose bathrooms are dirty, Bourdain cautions: Customers can see the bathrooms. He points out that if something visible is allowed to become that dirty, imagine what the hidden recesses of the kitchen look like. He also says not to order your steak well done. Most chefs are firm believers in the superiority of rare meat and reserve the worst cuts for diners who order their steaks well done. In addition, be wary of items like Shepherd’s Pie: They are brunch-adjacent, in that they typically make use of ingredients that are nearly too old to serve.
Still, Bourdain encourages eaters to be adventurous when given a special opportunity: He recalls one roadside stand in the Caribbean where he could see flies buzzing around the grill. The sanitation standards looked subpar. He ate there anyway, thinking: When is the next time I’m going to have the opportunity to eat this kind of food? He asserts that being a worldly eater is about knowing when to be cautious and when to open one’s self up to a new experience. If you want to see what the world has to offer and be an adventurous eater, you have to roll the dice and accept the consequences.
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “How to Cook Like the Pros”
Although the author loves home-cooked food, he understands that most people do not want advice on how to prepare their family favorites. They’ve come to this book for advice on how to cook restaurant food. Although he doubts this is possible (chefs and line cooks are, after all, professionals), he advises starting with the right tools. A high-quality chef’s knife is the most basic tool that a professional chef uses, and it can replace many of the useless kitchen gadgets sold in stores. He also advises purchasing a good boning knife, a paring knife, and a rating knife. These knives are made to perform tasks slightly outside of the range of a chef’s knife. To add sauce to dishes like a chef, Bourdain advises buying a plastic squeeze bottle. To cut food into perfectly equal pieces, he suggests a mandoline. He also advises buying high-quality, heavy-duty pots and pans, along with a non-stick sauté pan.
To make your recipes taste as though a chef prepared them, Bourdain recommends high-end butter, loads of garlic, and shallots. Most home cooks use onions, but shallots are more common in restaurants and give dishes extra flavor. Bourdain also notes that restaurants prepare stock and demi-glace (even further reduced stock) from scratch. This, too, will elevate home-cooked food. Making stock is easy and can take recipes to the next level. Lastly, he encourages home cooks to use fresh rather than dried herbs.
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary: “Owner’s Syndrome and Other Medical Anomalies”
The restaurant business is tough: It is hard to run a successful restaurant, and many new restaurants are destined for failure. Bourdain argues that restaurant owners are often ego-driven. They get into the business hoping to become a version of Rick in the film Casablanca, failing to understand how much goes into owning and running a restaurant. Others think that their love for a particular cuisine will carry them through tough times.
This, Bourdain points out, is an entirely false assumption. The skills that carry restaurateurs through tough times are more basic: knowledge of plumbing and health codes, Spanish fluency, how to manage difficult employees, and a host of other skills entirely unrelated to cooking. Talented, successful restaurateurs are few, but Bourdain knew one, whom he calls “Bigfoot,” who proved that he could be successful in the business long-term. Bourdain says that he is still making use of the lessons he learned from Bigfoot.
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary: “Bigfoot”
Bourdain meets Bigfoot, a chef, while in school at the CIA. He becomes an important mentor and influence because of his culinary skills, but even more so because of how he runs his restaurants and his tough-love approach to staff management. Bigfoot is often gruff in the kitchen but commands respect from his employees. This is because of how efficiently his kitchens run and because he is willing to hire people whom others might not, treats them well, and is always available to help his staff with personal issues like finding housing, handling immigration paperwork, and finding an attorney if they need legal help. Although he doesn’t tolerate lateness, he will make exceptions for employees who call him in advance to inform him that they might not be on time. He knows a tremendous amount of information about his staff members, from personal details to how many portions each cook can cut from a fish or large piece of meat. He wastes less food because of his organizational system, and his restaurants run smoother than most.
Bourdain has a tremendous amount of respect for Bigfoot, in part, because Bigfoot hired him at a particularly low point, when he was just out of a rehabilitation facility, still misusing substances, and disillusioned with restaurant work. He credits Bigfoot’s kindness and generosity with reinvigorating his interest in cooking. In addition, Bigfoot’s skill as a restaurateur showed him how to run his own kitchens when he was able to open his restaurant. To this day, Bourdain can spot chefs who at one point worked for Bigfoot and run their restaurant using Bigfoot’s system.
Part 2 Analysis
The second course of a meal is typically protein-based; considered the “meat” of the meal both literally and figuratively, it is often substantive and filling. In Part 2, titled “Second Course,” Bourdain gets into the “meat” of his advice for restaurant-goers and food lovers, providing information on both how to be a savvier diner and how to elevate home cooking. Part of what made this book so shocking and so popular when it was released was the behind-the-scenes information that Bourdain gave about some of the restaurant industry’s less savory practices, offering readers A Window Into Real Restaurant Subculture from the perspective of standards and operations. Here, he explores a list of menu items that he will not order, including hollandaise sauce, brunch, and most mussels. In addition, he explains that chefs typically order seafood to be fresh for the busy weekends and advises against ordering fish on Mondays, when it is already past its prime. Much of this information was, at the time of publication, part of the industry’s best-kept secrets, and Bourdain got pushback from chefs for alerting his readers to the more questionable aspects of professional cooking. Yet he also notes that legendary chefs like Jacques Pepin acknowledged that much of what he said was true, and that his book did have a positive impact on both diners and professionals. He adds that his intention is not to dissuade people from eating out or eating adventurously. On the contrary, he argues that it is nearly impossible to try new dishes and new cuisines without some risk, and shares that he’s eaten some dubious street food because it was the only opportunity for him to try an authentic, regional dish. Risk is part of the experience, and he argues that there can be no reward without risk. His focus is not entirely negative in this section, however. He also shares a list of common practices in restaurant kitchens, like the use of high-quality butter and shallots rather than onions, which can help the home cook elevate their own cooking. In these chapters, he exposes the world of restaurants, both the bad and the good, to de-mystify it for the reader.
Bourdain also continues his focus on “Street-Level” Cooking and its Practitioners in this section, providing a detailed account of what line cooks actually do. He points out that while the chef might be tasked with the creativity of menu planning, that creativity would be nothing without the consistency required to produce dishes of identical quantity and quality each time. He notes that much of restaurant cooking is repetitive work, and the best line cooks are not innovators but consistent perfectionists. He also notes the collective nature of work in restaurant kitchens, characterizing line cooking as “high-speed collaboration resembling, at its best, ballet or modern dance” (55). He notes that line cooks must have well-developed interpersonal skills and work well with a variety of people.
Bourdain also ruminates on the pitfalls and perils of running successful restaurants in this section. He points out that restaurateurs and chefs who are drawn to the abstract idea of running a restaurant always fail. The actual work of running a restaurant is difficult and requires a wide skillset. He introduces readers to friend and colleague Bigfoot as a way to introduce the ideal kind of chef: Bigfoot is an excellent cook, but he is also a skilled manager of people, can fix anything that goes wrong in the restaurant (including plumbing), and knows everything there is to know about his staff. He is aware of everything that happens in his restaurant and uses that knowledge to ensure that there are no issues with consistency and service. Bourdain models his kitchens after Bigfoot, and Bigfoot becomes another key influence as, like Bourdain, Food, Passion, and Professionalism intersect perfectly for him in the restaurant atmosphere.
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