The Nasty Bits, Continuing My Journey With Anthony Bourdain

I have purchased all of Anthony Bourdain’s books, and am reading them when I can. My latest adventure with him was through his book, The Nasty Bits.

Chef Bourdain continues to amuse and entertain me with his kitchen wisdom and wit. As I had said when I reviewed his book, Kitchen Confidential, Kitchen Confidential I agree with a lot of what he says, but of course not all. The kitchens I worked in were not nearly as chaotic as the ones he worked in or ran. Different times, different perspectives and different ideas I guess. The kitchens I worked in were certainly unruly, and definitely chaotic at times, but it was more of a controlled chaos and was not a constant.

I agree with Chef Bourdain, that in any kitchen, anywhere in the world, we all know, regardless of our rank, that “We are glorified servants, catering to to the whims of those usually wealthier than us, but we are tougher, meaner, stronger, and more reliable, and we are well aware of the fact that we can do something with our hands, our senses, the accumulation of 1000’s of meals served that they can’t. [We also] work harder, under more difficult situations” (p.19) than most people will ever know.

Professional kitchens are comprised of misfits that no one else fully understands, and truthfully, we don’t fully understand the non-misfits either. A professional kitchen is a different world, unknown to most. But somehow, we all come together as one in the kitchen. In the kitchen, we are all family.

Most of us who enter into the world of professional cooking all have our demons we are struggling with, and those demons all come with stories too. “And as the story of all great cooking is also the story of poverty, hardship, servitude and cruelty” (p. 20). My story was not as pronounced as the stories of many others, but it is not all that different either. My parents were blue collar, working class people that worked hard their whole lives, and made a lot of sacrifices in order to provide a better life for the three of us, and for me especially (I am an only child). I too learned the value of hard work, and had to work at a young age to help out. I worked all through high school and while in college, I worked a 40-hour work week while carrying a full load of 16 units for school. I had to work to get ahead, as we all do. My parents could not afford to send me to college on their own. I remember my first year of college, I was forced to decide between work and college, because I had asked for some time off to study for finals. When I told my boss I did not go to college to work in a restaurant, she fired me. Fortunately one of the other managers told me to come back after my finals were complete, and my job would still be there for me, and would still be mine. Through all my long hours of work and personal sacrifice, somehow, I still managed to graduate with very good grades too. Hard work and sacrifice define us, gives us character and makes us stronger.

I loved working in restaurants. I loved everything about them, but after many, many years, I started to get resentful. “When our customers play, we work. When our customers sleep, we play”. (p. 19) We work nights, weekends and holidays, all the time. After a while, it begins to take a large toll on us. “Cooking professionally is hard on us. It ravages the mind and body”. (pps. 128-129)

I laugh at all these young kids, full of hopes and dreams of becoming “a celebrity chef”. They have NO idea what it really takes to make it in our world. Most people can’t cut it. ” In our business, you’d better have a sense of humor. We flirt with disaster everyday, particularly during busy dinner rushes, when one screw-up, one mistake, one broken piece of equipment or ill prepared cook can send the whole night’s service careening into nightmare. … We know the sheer terror of running out of food, of being short-handed, and if we can’t laugh about it when it happens, afterward, we will eat ourselves alive”. (p. 100)

We also take a lot of pride in our work and what we do. We are artists of our trade. And we NEED to be in control of what goes on in our kitchens and our world. We are Type A personalities. We have to be in order to be successful. We NEED to control our chaos or soon it will control us. “Cooking professionally is a dominant act, at all times about control”. (p. 194) The only time we get to be out of control are the times, though very rarely, are the times we are eating well. “Eating well, is about submission. It’s about giving up all our vestiges of control, about entrusting your fate entirely to someone else”. (p. 194). Giving up control is NOT something we do easily or readily. It is VERY difficult for us indeed.

If you really want to know all about the ins and outs of what it’s really like inside a professional kitchen, I suggest reading any or all of Anthony Bourdain’s books. He doesn’t pull any punches, and he tells you the good, the bad AND the ugly. And believe me, there are many ugly parts in the back of the house, but there are also a lot of good parts too.

I will leave you with this. You all know how I tell you to play with your food and make it how you like. I say this all the time. This is just inherent in the chef’s DNA and makeup. It’s who we are. We ALL do it, all the time. “Chefs at the very least ‘tweak’ all that passes through their kitchens, no matter how classic the dish, essentially making it with the addition or subtraction of odd ingredients, somehow their own”. (p. 227). I have “tweaked” recipes my whole life and will continue to do so for as long as I continue to cook. I will never forget the words of my favorite chef instructor, Chef Averseng, “No, no, no Jeanne (pronounced by him as gee-nee), dis is not right,” which was always followed by “Oh, dis is good”. If you want to stand out, you have to put your own personality into something and make it your own.

No matter what you do, always have fun, but especially have fun in the kitchen. Have a great day and make everyday great. Stay safe and stay well. ‘Til next time.