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25/11/2005
Kitchen Confidential:: Book Review
What? Full star ratings?I would never have bought this book without knowing its contents. As a graphic designer, I tell you the cover sucks. But the content rocks! If not for the fact that my well-read sister-in-law passed the book to me as part of our ‘book exchange’ program, I would have never had the chance to flip through the pages and be so entertained in such an unrestrained manner! And I am stingy about giving full stars for a book because I believe there’s always room for improvement but…for Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, he has given me every reason and more to say a ‘hundred thumbs up’.
Background on Anthony Bourdain
For those who don’t yet know, Anthony Bourdain is a chef and his show called ‘No Reservations’ is currently (as of 2005, I think) being aired on Travel Channel. For Malaysians, I think you can catch it on Discovery, Astro. Based on this best-selling book, he’s even got a comedy series out produced by Fox. THAT’s how hilarious and side-splitting this book can be.
However, for those who don’t have the stomach for fart jokes, sex jokes and lurid suggestions of acts so dirty and unrestrained it makes Michael Jackson sound original, don’t read it. Yes, it’s a culinary adventure to be remembered and yes, every single page is absolutely hilarious. But it’s also filled with bad language, drugs and alcohol, sex and other unimaginable things we, normal people don’t but kitchen chefs do. Like slicing their own fingers off when they’re rushing a dish out. Ew!
By the way, you can read about the author’s visit to Malaysia here, http://travel.discovery.com/fansites/bourdain/take/malays....
The unbelievable characters
By virtue of the fact that he got his book published and movie published, we can be quite sure that every single character written about in the book is as real as the steak in front of you in a restaurant. But they are absolutely unbelievable and in fact, they are so real that you can imagine what they are like in real life. His teachers and mentors, namely Chef Bernard (the military trainer and teacher in chef school), BigFoot his mentor (whose advice and teachings he remembers till today), Steven (the guy who called a fellow kitchen staff in the middle of sex), Adam-real-last-name-unknown (the guy who was continuously late and showed tardiness in everything that he did, came and went as he liked and have a love-hate relationship with Bourdain throughout the book….they were all a bunch of lunatics. And common people love reading about lunatics like them.
The dream, the fall, the dumps and the rise to fame
He started off with a dream…or more like a piece of oyster he thought he was going to choke on! But from that first oyster on, he found his dream and it was FOOD. Through school and through training, he fought to find a purpose and once he did, he went through hell just to be good at what he is good at today. He went from peeling prawns, washing dishes, waiting on tables, cutting up vegetables and meat, ordering food, surpervising others, went back to waiting at tables, cutting vegetables and meat, supervising others to owning his own joint. He went up only to come down hard.
He laced his adventure with accounts of how the kitchen crew hung around the back of the kitchen drinking like they had no tomorrow to putting things into their noses. And the men’s room, the locker room….I wouldn’t want to be there. He talks about language problems (because most kitchen crews are foreigners) and how he learnt to adapt to those languages (really funny!). He learnt about different characters and how to find people who are loyal….and then how even loyal people can bail out on you. he talks about how to identify a rotting restaurant…and one that was already rotting by the time they hit the drawing board.
Wildly entertaining
That’s how I would describe this book because it’s a page turner without talking about aliens, abduction, murder, autopsies, car bombs, hijacking of plans, rape, etc. If you’re at all serious about reading, you just HAVE TO add this to your bookshelves.
18:50 Posted in Books | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this
Comments
COOL!! A lot of interesting.
Posted by: http://www.sinema.fr | 17/04/2007