Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

In 1981, Bourdain’s high-school friend Sam G. becomes the chef de cuisine at Work Progress in Soho. The restaurant had fallen on hard times and was under new ownership: a trio of men so lacking in restaurant experience that Bourdain, Sammy, and Dmitri (whom Sammy recruited along with Bourdain) have nothing but contempt for them. The three cooks bully the owners out of the kitchen and set to work hiring a back-of-the-house (kitchen) dream team, comprised of outcasts from all over the city. 

They re-create the atmosphere from the Dreadnaught: Their kitchen is drug and alcohol-fueled, chaotic, and loud. They listen to the opening sequence from Apocalypse Now before every shift and end each night with a cocaine and alcohol binge, sleeping on the beach. They give free food to the bouncers at CBGB (a nearby club) and other local clubs in exchange for waived cover fees. They play elaborate pranks on the waitstaff and managers. The restaurant fails. In retrospect, Bourdain admits that despite their swagger and bravado, their food was just not good enough. Luckily, another old friend offers him his first chef’s job just in time, and he leaves for a new venture.

At only 22 years old, Bourdain becomes the chef at Tom H, a restaurant in the theatre district whose departing chef was described lovingly by the staff as “an alcoholic psychopath” (128). Bourdain knows that he is cut from this same cloth, but the management does not, and he happily begins this new phase of his career. He finds himself touched by how sweet the owners are: a gay couple famous for their dinner parties, whose dream has long been to make it in the restaurant business. 

Bourdain tries to behave himself and pours all his energy into the business. The entire front-of-the-house staff is gay, and Bourdain is thrilled to hear the stories of their long nights clubbing and sexual exploits. He realizes that there is true common ground between the gay New York City subculture of the early 1980s and the world of kitchen staff. 

He is chagrined as expenses mount and sales drop, and when it becomes clear that the restaurant is going to fail, he leaves. He takes a series of jobs in similarly doomed restaurants, lured in by the promise of a larger paycheck than he would draw elsewhere and an increasingly problematic heroin habit.

Bourdain is now employed in a large Italian restaurant, Gino’s. The owner has a fleet of restaurants and shuffles Bourdain around for a bit, including a stint in his Baltimore location. Although Bourdain is a heavy drug user at this time, he is shocked by what goes on in these kitchens. One of the prep cooks is a drug dealer, put on the payroll so that management and staff will have constant, easy access to cocaine. 

Bourdain brings Dmitri into the restaurant and relies on his expertise more and more: The restaurants are floundering, and Bourdain is much more comfortable with French than Italian cuisine. As the restaurants continue to lose money, Bourdain becomes increasingly disillusioned with the chef’s life. He vows to find a new job but demote himself: He will no longer run kitchens. He’d rather work in the line again.

Although Bourdain is no longer using heroin, he begins to rely heavily on cocaine to get through his days. He finds it ironic that his career begins to falter when he stops using heroin, but admits, in retrospect, that as a cocaine user, he was much less reliable. He works in a series of seedy restaurants whose slow pace affords him ample time to use drugs, and finally ends up at Billy’s, a place that is run by organized crime. 

He doesn’t stay long at Billy’s and moves on to a gig at a Mexican restaurant from which he is fired for reasons that remain unclear to him. (Although he does admit that he could have let go for a wide range of reasons, all of them legitimate.) From there, he continues drifting, working at an increasingly bleak series of small, dirty restaurants. He feels that he is no longer a chef and cannot truly even call himself a cook. He feels that he has hit rock bottom both personally and professionally, and something must change.

Things are still not going well. Bourdain’s unemployment is about to run out, and he has had little luck finding a new job. His apartment is filthy, he spends most of his days in bed smoking, and he feels utterly hopeless. Then he receives a callback for a job at an upscale steakhouse, a job he knows he can easily do.

He feels a sense of excitement going into the interview. It goes well until he mishears a key question the restaurant’s owner asks. The man, Bourdain thought, asked him what he knows “about me.” Bourdain replies that he honestly knows very little about the restaurateur. He is met with shocked silence and leaves in confusion. The man had a thick Irish accent, and as Bourdain walks down the street after the interview, he realizes that he’d been asked not about “me,” but about “meat.” He’d just told the owner of a steakhouse that he, a prospective chef, knows very little about meat.

Bourdain goes to work for Pino Luongo, a controversial figure both adored and reviled within New York’s restaurant community. He owns a series of restaurants, and Bourdain ends up at one that specializes in Tuscan cuisine. He aces the interview by cooking bluefish, an ingredient seen by many in the industry as a “trash” fish, but both Bourdain and Pino appreciate it. 

Although he is not a fan of Italian food, Bourdain is awed by the simple beauty of the restaurant’s food: Everything is of the highest quality and cooked entirely from scratch, even the pasta and tomato sauces. He and Pino share an interest in underappreciated ingredients and a dedication to letting food’s natural qualities shine. They also share a commitment to all aspects of running a kitchen: Pino is adept at fixing wiring, plumbing, and other issues that might pop up. 

Because Pino insists that Bourdain’s chef de cuisine will be a man who Bourdain knows is hostile, he stocks the rest of the kitchen with staff whom he knows and likes, people who will be loyal to him. Pino finds out that Bourdain has been poaching workers from other chefs but isn’t upset at all. In fact, it makes him respect Bourdain more. 

However, things quickly change. Bourdain struggles with Pino’s hostile loyalists, restaurant politics, and even the food. He is asked to step down and work under his chef de cuisine. He refuses and quits. Still, he has fond memories of Pino and is grateful to him for imparting an appreciation for Italian cuisine.