This book by one of the best-known celebrity chefs, that has the subtitle Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, describes the world of haute cuisine, of fancy restaurants serving French food or offering other forms of high-end dining, and what goes on behind he scenes in the kitchens. The food that he talks about is completely foreign to me, not even recognizing the names of the dishes or the chefs and restaurants he talks about. For me, food is something I feel that I have to eat in order to stay alive. I am not a good cook and tend to prepare and eat the same damn dull things over and over. So when I say that I thoroughly enjoyed the book and can strongly recommend it, it has to be because it is much more than about food.

So what made me decide to read the book in the first place? I first encountered Bourdain when I learned that one of his episodes on his long-running CNN documentary series Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown dealt with Sri Lanka. I watched that and then watched a few other episodes. These shows were much more than about food, they were about the countries and the cultures he visited. What struck me about Bourdain was how comfortable he seemed in the many diverse cultures he encountered. He seemed to fit right in. He would eat whatever food they ate, without reservations. In his book, he says that he never shied away from any food at all as long as he was pretty sure it would not kill him. And the test of that was whether the locals ate it. He would eat and live in the way the locals did. If they sat on the floor, he sat on the floor. If they ate with their fingers, he ate with their fingers. If they ate with chopsticks, he ate with chopsticks. If they used banana leaves as plates, so did he. If they killed their food in the wild before eating it, and even ate it raw, so would he. He seemed to be completely at home, wherever he was.

The book is part biography, part about what makes a good cook, and part about the life and politics of the restaurant business, warts and all. His personality shines strongly through his writing, which has a direct in-your-face style that makes for gripping reading that is best illustrated by some longish passages.

He describes his first adventure in eating that occurred when he was about 11 years old and went with his family on an oyster fishing boat in France owned by a neighbor.

There was, I recall, still about two feet of water left to go before the hull of the boat settled on dry ground and we could walk about the parc. We’d already polished off the Brie and baguettes and downed the Evian, but I was still hungry, and characteristically said so.

Monsieur Saint-Jour, on hearing this—as if challenging his American passengers—inquired in his thick Girondais accent if any of us would care to try an oyster.

My parents hesitated. I doubt they’d realized they might actually have to eat one of the raw, slimy things we were currently floating over. My little brother recoiled in horror.

But I, in the proudest moment of my young life, stood up smartly, grinning with defiance, and volunteered to be the first.

And in that unforgettably sweet moment in my personal history, that one moment still more alive for me than so many of the other “firsts” that followed—first pussy, first joint, first day in high school, first published book or any other thing—I attained glory. Monsieur Saint-Jour beckoned me over to the gunwale, where he leaned over, reached down until his head nearly disappeared underwater and emerged holding a single silt-encrusted oyster, huge and irregularly shaped, in his rough, clawlike fist. With a snubby, rust-covered oyster knife, he popped the thing open and handed it to me, everyone watching now, my little brother shrinking away from this glistening, vaguely sexual-looking object, still dripping and nearly alive.

I took it in my hand, tilted the shell back into my mouth as instructed by the now beaming Monsieur Saint-Jour and with one bite and a slurp, wolfed it down. It tasted of seawater . . . of brine and flesh . . . and somehow . . . of the future.

Everything was different now. Everything.


I’d not only survived—I’d enjoyed.


This, I knew, was the magic of which I had until now been only dimly and spitefully aware. I was hooked. My parents’ shudders, my little brother’s expression of unrestrained revulsion and amazement only reinforced the sense that I had, somehow, become a man. I had had an adventure, tasted forbidden fruit and everything that followed in my life—the food, the long and often stupid and self-destructive chase for the next thing, whether it was drugs or sex or some other new sensation—would all stem from this moment.

I’d learned something. Viscerally, instinctively, spiritually— even in some small, precursive way, sexually—and there was no turning back. The genie was out of the bottle. My life as a cook, and as a chef, had begun.

Food had power.

It could inspire, astonish, shock, excite, delight and impress. It had the power to please me . . . and others. This was valuable information. (p. 16, 17)

The book describes the high-intensity, fast-paced, high-testosterone-fueled atmosphere in the largely male-dominated kitchens of restaurants, with people routinely using extremely coarse and profane language. Women were relatively rare, though the ones who survived and excelled and rose up in the ranks learned to give as good as they got.

In another passage, he describes the ethnic composition of the kitchen staff, especially after the emergence of the era of celebrity chefs and caused well-to-do young Americans to aspire to become one, the way that Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein, and All the President’s Men transformed what has been the working-class ethos of journalism into a career that attracted elite college-educated young people.

Generally speaking, America cooks—meaning, born in the USA, possibly school-trained, culinarily sophisticated types who know before you show them what monter au beurre means and how to make a béarnaise sauce—are a lazy, undisciplined and, worst of all, high-maintenance lot, annoyingly opinionated, possessed of egos requiring constant stroking and tune-ups and, as members of a privileged and wealthy population, unused to the kind of “disrespect” a busy chef is inclined to dish out. No one understands and appreciates the American Dream of hard work leading to material rewards better than a non-American. The Ecuadorian, Mexican, Dominican and Salvadorian cooks I’ve worked with over the years make most CIA [i.e. the Culinary Institute of America, not the spy agency-MS]-educated white boys look like clumsy, sniveling little punks.

In New York City, the days of the downtrodden, underpaid illegal immigrant cook, exploited by his cruel masters, have largely passed—at least where quality line cooks are concerned. Most of the Ecuadorians and Mexicans I hire from a large pool—a sort of farm team of associated and often related former dishwashers— are very well-paid professionals, much sought after by other chefs. Chances are they’ve worked their way up from the bottom rung; they remember well what it was like to empty out grease traps, scrape plates, haul leaking bags of garbage out to the curb at four o’ clock in the morning. A guy who’s come up through the ranks, who knows every station, every recipe, every corner of the restaurant and and who has learned, first and foremost, your system above all others, is likely to be more valuable and long-term than some bed-wetting white boy whose mom brought him up thinking the world owed hm a living, and who thinks he actually knows a few things. (p. 56, 57)
…

The great three-star kitchens around the world are now staffed largely by the itinerant sons and daughters of the middle class, educated, even privileged—yet working for free. They bounce around the world, working six month “stages,” accumulating experience under the masters, and return to their hometowns and cities in hope of making it Big. People with perfectly good jobs as stock-brokers and attorneys chuck it all to attend culinary school—enamored by the perceived romanticism of a cooking life. Most of this latter group are, of course, soon ground beneath the wheel. (p. 304)

He gives some advice for anyone thinking of becoming a chef. One of them is the following:

LearnSpanish!

I can’t stress this enough. Much of the work force in the industry you are about to enter is Spanish-speaking. The very backbone of the industry, whether you like it or not, is inexpensive Mexican, Dominican, Salvadorian and Ecuadorian labor—most of whom could cook you under the table without breaking a sweat. If you can’t communicate, develop relationships, understand instructions and pass them along, then you are at a tremendous disadvantage.

Should you become a leader, Spanish is absolutely essential.

Also, learn as much as you can about the distinct cultures, histories and geographies of Mexico, El Salvador, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. A cook from Puebla is different in back- ground from a cook from Mexico City. Someone who fled El Salvador to get away from the Mano Blanco is not likely to get along with the right-wing Cuban working next to him. These are your coworkers, your friends, the people you will be counting on, leaning on for much of your career, and they in turn will be looking to you to hold up your end. Show them some respect by bothering to know them. Learn their language. Eat their food. It will be personally rewarding and professionally invaluable. (p. 289, 290)

He continues later in the same vein that although some aspects of the industry have changed, much remains the same.

It is—at the end of the day—still a very difficult business. Some things never change. Long hours, cramped working conditions, bad ventilation, relentless pressure, volatile personalities and the endless, often mindless repetition of a thousand small tasks that only the strong, the serious and those with a sense of humor survive. If this book “exposed” anything important it is, I hope, the simple fact that cooking professionally is hard. And that the road to any kind of success can be a long and bumpy one—much of that time spent peeling shallots, dicing carrots, or pulling the leaves off herbs in a hot cellar.

The true backbone of the American restaurant industry, however, remains largely Latino. As long as American kids are absent from the dishwasher station, there will be Mexicans and Ecuadorians entering the business in great numbers, soon, inevitably, to be seen by chefs as the better bet for prep work, then garde manger, and then line positions. Unlike their more upwardly mobile peers, they are seen as less likely to move on—as being more stable and reliable, thereby promising chefs the kind of stability and continuity we all cherish. They’re the ones the incoming white boys look to to learn the ropes—and they’re the ones who remain behind when the white boys move on to the next thing. Something to keep in mind when you see the almost inevitably white celebrity chef on television or at a public appearance or at an awards ceremony is that back at their restaurant, it’s often Latino kitchen workers who are making it possible for them to even be there. Though the level of interest in chefs and in cooking has intensified, the focus remains almost exclusively on the chef; a cult of personality propagated and perpetuated by the willing suspension of disbelief by food writers looking for a punchy hook for their articles and by chefs and their publicists (no fools we) who are charged with getting more customers through the door to spend money. As before, the people actually cooking your food remain invisible, unacknowledged, anonymous, misunderstood. While customers now want to meet the chef who they saw on TV, have him swing by the table for a little face time—do they really want to meet the kid from Puebla, Mexico, who actually prepared their tuna? Apparently not. (p. 304, 305)

He says that these immigrants work harder, longer, more conscientiously, are rarely tardy, and almost never fail to show up, making them the preferred choice for chefs and owners. As he says, the upper ranks of them comprising the line cooks are no longer illegal and are well-paid. But the lower ranks. who do the essential tasks that enable the upper ranks to excel, still are often illegal and low-paid. One wonders what will happen, apart from the personal misery caused to them, to the industry itself when Trump carries out his plan to round up and deport all of them.

At what we might have considered the height of his career, famous and traveling all over thee world doing what he seemed to love, which was having new experiences with new people, new food, and new cultures, Bourdain took his own life in 2017, hanging himself in his hotel bathroom in France. He was 61 years old.

Like many people, I was shocked by the news. Even though Bourdain had apparently spoken candidly about his recurring thoughts of suicide by hanging and about his personal struggles with unhappiness, depression, loneliness, and self-doubt, I had not heard about them. I came across this post that describes an on-camera therapy session in Buenos Aires that Bourdain recorded in 2016 for his TV program, just 18 months before his death, where he discusses his psychological problems and describes himself as having a narcissistic personality disorder..

It is very hard to understand why seemingly successful people take their own lives. But somehow, reading this book gave me, in some way that I cannot put into words, an understanding of why Bourdain might have done so. He was a man who burned the candle at both ends, pushing himself to have new adventures and experiences. What happens when you think the candle has come to an end?