The Anthony Bourdain thread

I saw that Bourdain gig, my bro's restaurant is not far from that uh... civic center? He's hoping that he stops by his place...

Which restaurant is your bro's?

yeah i was somewhat curious to see him until i saw the ticket price - $85 to see a guy on a book tour? it's not even at an intimate venue either, it's at the type of place arcade fire or the national might play. i could maybe vaguely understand if it was some prarie home companion or 'this american life - LIVE!' thing but bourdain telling a few stories, dissing a few people, and then a q&a from the back of a civic center for $85 - i cannot fathom it. anyhow there is one section of the book about the guy who fillets fish for le bernardin that really is pretty great, if the whole book was composed of pieces like that i would be raving, but most of it reads like blog posts almost, so unfocused and underdeveloped. there's also this long bizarre screed that's like holden caufield narrating la dolce vita, so awful, and it's early in the book also so i was reading it thinking 'dear god - is the whole book gonna be THIS?'. my advice if you do read the book is if you're bored by the section you're reading just skip ahead to the next cuz it ain't like there's anything tying them together or any larger ideas he's working through.

So him making out with Eric Ripert is off the table...

also i should say i read bill buford's heat about a month ago and really really loved it and reading this book so soon after might've stacked the chips against it. if anyone can recommend more books like heat do plz. amazon recommending 'playing for pizza' by john gresham isn't really helping me out.

$85 to see a guy on a book tour?

Yeah that's nuts. He's not going to say $85 worth of things you don't already know. That's just demand dictating price, is all. Ah, the free market. Skip it.

I saw him at Borders on Mich Ave for free, like, four years ago. Unless he's added pyrotechnics, there's NO reason to pay $85 to see him. You can get someone younger and prettier to blow you twice for that.

real talk imo

I realize that both have their faults but while Heat is a really interesting book, it makes me hate its author so, so much, really DESPISE him. Whereas Bourdain's less well-written book makes him seem like a bro. An asshole, but also a bro.

I feel like you've explained this before, Laurel, but why the hate for Buford?

I started reading Heat about a month ago but only made it about 70 pages in before I set it aside. Should probably pick it up again.

From previous WKIW threads, my thoughts re B Buford:

I think he lets his little proprieties, insecurities, and grievances rule over the big stuff, and then sort of glorifies it in the guise of being "sheepish" about it. There's just no...expansiveness ... Also the way people kept responding to him not necessarily really warmly? I think just reading between the lines that he wasn't the kind of person who inspires others to open up, really.

Iirc there's a bit in Heat where he has a fit of pique about some woman chef, I can't remember the details but it was someone who really didn't deserve it, like he was mad at her for not...LIKING him more, not being friendly enough to him??? And you can tell that he thinks he's doing penance for his bad temper/self-centeredness by telling you about it, as if revealing his worst self is its own punishment, but it just makes EVERYTHING ALL ABOUT HIM on about three more layers.

i keep on meaning to read it, i enjoyed the excerpts in the new yorker

xpost

I thought 'Heat' was ok. Books like it that I though were more successful are "Making of a Chef" by Michael Ruhlman and maybe "Outlaw Cook" by John Thorne. The Thorne book is more episodic and recipe-driven, so if you don't like the chapter you're on, skip to the next.

I'm waiting for Bourdain's book to go on remainders or for someone to gift it for Xmas. I don't want to fork over a lot of cash for a very mediocre book (at least that's what I think the consensus has been).

I usually enjoy No Reservations, but I watched an episode about San Francisco last night that was probably the worst episode I've seen so far.

First, he was drunk the entire time to a point where he was nearly incoherent. Second, he spent a lot of time eating very unappealing-looking food. And finally, he devoted the rest of the show to droning on and on about how amazed he is to find actual meat in San Francisco because we all know that it is a city exclusively populated by vegan hippies.

I'm getting kind of sick of the ridiculous assumptions he constantly makes and the equally ridiculous ways that he gets his assumptions challenged. It is very clear he believes that outside of NYC, there shouldn't be a single place in the US (various inner-city slums being the exception) where anything good or "authentic" could possibly be found. The shtick has grown incredibly tiresome.

Also getting sick of the thing where he thinks he deserves a Congressional Medal of Honor because he got stuck at a 5 star hotel in Beirut when Israel started shelling it. We get it man, you were in a war zone for a couple of hours.

I think the quality went WAY DOWN when he was so unhappy with the Food Network. I've seen episodes where I'm amazed what a whining baby he is, with a nasty adult petulance, where he doesn't change his shirt for the whole thing, and it's not just sartorially questionable, it's like, old and dirty. So quality is wildly variable. But most of the eps with the Travel Channel are way more professional.

I kind of feel like the type of stuff from the San Fran ep - holy CRAP, there's meat in VeganTown - is a total play on what a lot of the REST of America thinks of San Francisco.

He's way to deep in the game to think that San Francisco, with the $$$ and cultural diversity there doesn't have its share of meat eaters, and expensive places in which those meat eaters can satisfy their cravings.

Yeah, I think sometimes he dives way too deep into his 'hahah I'm being ironical' pose, and it starts to muddy the waters of just how much of an arrogant asshole he really is, or is perceived to be.

Unless he's added pyrotechnics, there's NO reason to pay $85 to see him. You can get someone younger and prettier to blow you twice for that.

hahahahaha

I'm sure that's true, but he went way over the top with it, making hippie vegan cracks about ever 5 seconds.

My biggest disappointment is that San Francisco is a huge city with an amazing array of fantastic food, but it was just obvious that he wasn't even trying to find anything interesting there.

xxpost

The Portland/Seattle episode was much the same: "Oh look! Chefs with tattoos! Here's a wacky doughnut place called Voodoo Doughnuts!" And where does he wind up eating? The fucking Heathman Hotel. So lazy.

Iirc there's a bit in Heat where he has a fit of pique about some woman chef, I can't remember the details but it was someone who really didn't deserve it, like he was mad at her for not...LIKING him more, not being friendly enough to him??? And you can tell that he thinks he's doing penance for his bad temper/self-centeredness by telling you about it, as if revealing his worst self is its own punishment, but it just makes EVERYTHING ALL ABOUT HIM on about three more layers.

Ha OK, I've read that part. But I dunno, it didn't really bother me that much, especially since the book is a memoir. I mean, he's writing with a bit more of a journalistic style than most memoirs, but I think that section of the book is all about what it feels like for him, as someone without any kitchen experience, to walk into the back of a place like Babbo. I'd probably react in a similar way!

Also questionable how much control he has on the content of the shows, like what kinds of things they're going to visit/do. I prefer the foreign country episodes where there's some history & local interest stories tbh, more travel-y than food-y, because all he's ever going to say about the food anyway is "Man, this is really good!" or "I gotta tell you, this is one of the worst things I've ever eaten."

I sort of wonder how much of his animus toward the Bay Areas has to do with Alice Waters.

jaymc, I think in person he's not very...likeable, and I have no idea if he KNOWS that but he reacts to people as if they OUGHT to like him, only you would actually have to be, like, warm and sympathetic & have a way of being that seems "real" and approachable to others, in order to travel the world inserting yourself into people's lives for the purpose of your own story.

Then he's, like, all snittily MAD that they didn't like him more. Dude, stop being a giant baby!

Ah that makes sense.

Sorry, to be clear: the personal criticisms are about Buford and the Travel Channel vs Food Network etc is about Bourdain. Just in case anyone couldn't tell.

If you guys were real fans of Bourdain, you would have caught his early (failed) TV show called A Cook's Tour starring Tony Bourdain where he fawns over SF... he goes to Pollyanna's to get Durian Ice Cream, then Swan Oyster Depot, then tours The French Laundry garden with Chef Thomas Keller. Eats VIP chef's tasting menu (4x18 courses, quad-prep) with a brunette!!! Eric Ripert (Le Bernadin), Michael Ruhlman (TFL geek/author) and Scott Bryan (Veritas). Marlboro cigarette infused coffee custard served at intermission as Bourdain is clearly dying for a cigarette.

jaymc.xls would be interested to know that in this episode "gastronomy pioneer" (jay's lolworthy words, not mine) mr. Grant Achatz was working 3rd on the line probably "pioneering" some meat sears and starting some sauces and in fact gets a little face time. my bro gets about 20 seconds.

it pops up on youtube every once in a while before getting pulled.

brunette!!! => Eric Ripert if that wasn't clear.

This aired in 99 or 00 iirc.

Books like it that I though were more successful are "Making of a Chef" by Michael Ruhlman

agreed, similar vibe to 'heat' but much better.

I watched A Cook's Tour.

The book version of A Cook's Tour is v v good and worthwhile.

The reason I fawned so much over Kitchen Confidential when it came out was I was about halfway through a 6-7 year stint in kitchens when it appeared, and it seemed to me like nothing that related so well to the life I was living at the time had ever been published. I gush about it somewhere upthread.

(18 course chef's tasting menu quad-prep) = a total of 72 off-the-menu dishes custom made from the kitchen to be split 4-ways. it's basically a merry go round of food. plates get dropped, each diner takes a bite and then rotates to the person on your left. pretty intense! you have to be in the mood for it but at The French Laundry, it's definitely worth it.

So You Wanna Be a Chef by Anthony Bourdain

(long, contrite, well worth reading!)

really enjoyed that, thank you. he is a bit irritatingly macho but it was a great read.

"And you can tell that he thinks he's doing penance for his bad temper/self-centeredness by telling you about it, as if revealing his worst self is its own punishment"

re: buford, the book i read before 'heat' was the one where he embeds himself with football hooligans and takes part in a riot, so the charlie brown insecurities of 'heat' are pretty hilarious by comparison.

He wears his drug phase like a badge of honor. It's corny and sad.

Oh, I read Among the Thugs a long time ago, actually I'm embarrassed to say I hardly remember anything of it except at the end when he spins a tale of shoving some nice pensioners out of the way on a stair. I mean the guy is a douche.

jaymc.xls would be interested to know that in this episode "gastronomy pioneer" (jay's lolworthy words, not mine) mr. Grant Achatz

Ha, did I say that? Well.

I did refer to Ferran Adria as a "pioneer" in an encyclopedia article; feel free to write in if you dispute it.

i can see further upthread where you link to an interview where someone else refers to him as a pioneer? maybe that's what shasta means

I never got the impression he has any pride about his drug use, I always thought he references it more like a warning.

i.e. as in this article

Hey yeah, that wasn't me, that was whoever edited that Slate interview!

i think it was in the gastronomy thread with that chubby "alt" looking guy who I still have never heard about it. possibly started by that one poster (name escapes me) who gets v excited about single-speed conversions and fatty foods... think he's a borderline freegan type (?), posted a lot about the bro-ness of critical mass? sorry if this is you dude, just my impression based on my pisspoor ilx scanning sessions.

jdchurchill's thread about Graham Elliot Bowles.

I dunno, he sure talks about the drug use a lot ... usually along with an anecdote about how sweet the New York Dolls were.

And it's not like he isn't currently a drug addict. He popped a shitload of pills in that behind-the-scenes episode!

eek, sorry jaymc i think i confused you with Anton...

Graham Elliot Bowles:"Molecular gastronomy is like the culinary version of Emo…"

Didn't care for the Ruhlman book, which I started to read directly after Heat. Thought it was overly dry - as I don't want to learn to cook, I'm more interested in the social exploration of Bourdain and Buford's books.

(xp after glancing at that thread again) ...although from that thread I think both of you have this real hero-worship for Achatz (midwestern pride?) which while I think he's a great dude and a great chef, he often gets mentioned in the same breath as far-greater talents. imho, nn: i have never eaten at Alinea, but I ate plenty of his cooking at previous gigs.