About two months ago, while driving the Atlantic and Mediterranean costs of France in the WunderVan, running away from one storm after the other, once getting evacuated from a camp site due to heavy rain, I finally got around to listening to Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. Indeed. Audio books are becoming the norm as I, after thirty plus years living in Europe, finally get to see some of it while on the run in my pseudo hippy bus slash camper van.
Anthony Bourdain’s brilliantly narrated TV and media presence always caught my ear. The way he tells the story of not only his love of cooking but how he weaves a fine thread of (his) life through cooking made great documentary-like television. Of all the cooks on tv or the intewebnets, bellowing both exuberance and preparation and consumption of food, Bourdain was and still is the best. Bourdain’s laissez faire, or is it nonchalant, or is it hippy-art delivery of all-things food might never be topped. When I heard that he killed himself my first thought was: what a fcuking waste.
One of the things that makes Kitchen Confidential such a good listen is Bourdain narrating it. This is only my second audio book, and both were narrated by the author. Are self narrated audio books better than third party narration? I guess I’ll have to figure that out for myself. Anywho. Five plus hours of nonstop restaurant and kitchen stories working FOR THE MAN or the mafia or with dope-heads and thereby losing oneself to drugs and booze and women and and and for the sake of making something to eat, almost feels like a rock star story. Or is it Icarus? Again. Nomatter. The thing is. I could listen to Bourdain for many more hours–even though some of the book is a bit tideous. When it’s not tideous this book is nothing less than an ode to not only good food but how to enjoy preparing it–with plenty of tips about how to do it. I especially like the stuff about keeping your station orderly and clean–the thing I pride myself on when I’m cooking at home. The thing that so many people forget when they cook–thereby leaving a huge mess for someone else to clean because, well, messy people always think someone else should do the cleaning. And even though Bourdain comes from elite blood where he admits to parents thinking/wishing he’d been a doctor or scientist or business man he dances around elitism with brilliant but simple narration portraying bottom up cooks, dishwashers, waiters AND waitresses, prep stations, cooking tools, learning Spanish (so one can work with the low wage help in the kitchen), etc., all in search of the perfect meal–which ultimately isn’t the meal but instead the way one gets to it. And then there’s the way he briefly but precisely explains the taste of oysters that he discovers on the Atlantic coast of France–where I too have indulged myself–is poetic and mouth watering.
There’s a few non cooking issues that Bourdain brings up in his narrative that stood out for me, especially considering that he took his own life in 2018 in a small town in France–which we passed by listening to this book. The first is his drug addiction. The whole heroin thing kinda freaked me out. The idear that one can work in a kitchen, with all those sharp tools, while hooked to heroin felt a bit far fetched. Then again, I do recall how heroin, once you come off the rush, works well with cocaine. Of course, Bourdain brags about his coke use too. Yeah. He brags about lots of other drugs. Ok. There’s that. Boring.
The other issue is the almost prophetic mention of a cook he knew who took his own life because, according to Bourdain, he couldn’t take the pressure of high-end, executive restaurant cooking. He mentions this suicide at least twice in the book and one can hear in his voice that something (relatable) is on his mind. One of the things I’ve always admired but also questioned about Bourdain is his ability to maintain such a sleek and Hollywood-like appearance during every onscreen presence. I mean. This man eats and drinks and smokes in every one of his Parts Unknown shows. How the heck does he stay so thin and looking so handsome? Oh yeah. He’s no longer a drug addict. Yeah, right.
Bourdain was supposed to be clean for the last years of his life. But I don’t believe it for a second. This man was definitely haunted–in more ways than one. Did he ever really kick the heroin habit? The coke? What he obviously didn’t kick was the mindset that one can hear in (his) soliloquy. It’s the same voice through and through–a voice of burden, a voice haunted, a voice that is somehow not selfless but is, at times, empty and void for all the wrong reasons.
RIP Anthony Bourdain!
Rant on.
-T
wurstwriter 