Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Anthony Bourdain: Man You Should Know

Posted by Josh in A Cook's Tour, Anthoney Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential, Man You Should Know, No Reservations

Editors Note: This new weekly feature will profile men who are shaping the world, are at the top of their fields, or are just all around awesome. Our hope is that if these names pop up in conversation, your eyes won’t gloss over and you will have something to add. In short, these are Men You Should Know.

Executive Summary: Hard-drinking, chain-smoking chef who turned the restaurant industry upside down with his book “Kitchen Confidential.” He now hosts a show on the Travel Channel.

Why Know Him: He kicks more ass than anyone you will ever see on the Food Network (and mocks them all openly).

Bourdain is currently a chef, author, and television personality, though for most of his life, he only went by the first title. After attending the Culinary Institute of America and working at seafood restaurants in Provincetown, Bourdain came back to his native New York. He was a journeyman chef there for years, moving from restaurant to restaurant until he eventually ended up in Les Halles, a French Brasserie. During his years as a chef, he was an on-again, off-again writer, publishing two fictional novels set in the food world and the occasional article in magazines and newspapers. He gained notoriety for an exposé of the restaurant industry that was published in The New Yorker in 1999. The essay, Don’t Eat Before Reading This, documented the variety of ways in which expensive restaurants cut corners and took risks with customer’s health and was the base for his 2001 book, “Kitchen Confidential,” a memoir that gave a startlingly realistic portrait of the food industry (and later, a terrible sitcom on Fox that we will make no further mention of).

The book shocked people by detailing the way restaurants cut corners, abuse staff, and hold customers in contempt — and why everyone involved in it loved every second of it. “Confidential” also documented the various ways that Bourdain’s own career (and the career of many other famous chefs) had been fueled by drugs, women, and punk rock.

What followed was fame, fortune, and after the jump.

The success of “Kitchen Confidential” led the Food Network to offer Bourdain a miniseries. Called A Cook’s Tour, the show documented Bourdain’s travels around the world in search of the perfect meal. He simultaneously published a book by the same name. The success of that program prompted the little known Travel Channel to offer him his own ongoing series (before him, we had always assumed it was some lame combination of the Golf and Weather Channels). The show, No Reservations, features Bourdain traveling around the world sampling different cultures. Because of Bourdain’s drinking, smoking, and swearing, it is the only show on the network that features a parental advisory warning (possibly the only travel show at all?). In 2007, Bourdain again gained notoriety for writing a much-forwarded blog post that excoriated most of the food network hosts.

Bourdain is a living monument to openess. From him, we can learn that following your dreams and being open to every new experience (and drug) that comes along can lead to a pretty great life. Sure, sometimes you may eat wild boar anus or a live cobra (and he really has), but Bourdain says you have to leave yourself open to the bad meals if you want to be able to find the great ones.

Anthony Bourdain: Wikipedia - blog - bio1 - bio2 - Great Interview

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