The Anthony Bourdain thread

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.

Genuine question: who were the pioneers of molecular gastronomy in the USA? How far behind was Achatz / Alinea?

Hostess? Actually, I'm curious what the interplay is between giant processed snack company food science culture and haute cuisine. Do they respect each other from afar, or do they draft and trade personnel pretty frequently?

Wiley had a James Beard while Achatz was still working the line at TFL.

Haha I guess I'll need a wikipedia to understand that answer.

Ok my lovely American wife has explained "Wiley" "James Beard" and I've figured out The French laundry ( unless you mean Transport for London ....)

Sorry:

Wiley Dufresne (sp? America's best known Molecular Gastronomy chef) had a James Beard award for best rising chef while Grant Achatz was still working on the line (saucier? protein station?) at The French Laundry.

...although from that thread I think both of you have this real hero-worship for Achatz (midwestern pride?)

?

I've never eaten at Alinea, either, so there's no hero-worship on my part. I do really want to eat there, though, which shouldn't be too surprising since it's widely considered the best restaurant in the city in which I live.

It's also possible that over the years I have also misjudged Achatz's relative importance in the culinary scene, given all the attention that he has received in Chicago (but also elsewhere, e.g. the New Yorker profile). But that's because I didn't really become interested in this stuff until fairly recently. I had never heard of Wylie Dufresne until I watched the first season of Top Chef Masters last summer.

I have eaten there, it was v good. I was under the impression that Achatz was at the leading edge of the molecular thing in the US (if not the actual first), which is why I asked the question. Not that it makes any difference to the quality of the food, of course.

wd~50 in NYC opened a few years (03?) before Alinea to much higher fanfare (maybe due to east coast media bias lol). dufresne is much more visible, infamous for running around like a chicken with its head cut off during quickfire challenges on reality cooking program(me)s.

shasta recommend some food (culture/crit not how to/cook) books. not bothered if writer comes off as 'mean' or 'a douchebag' or if some of the people in it are 'assholes'.

for example zola's 'belly of paris' - should i read that? not a zola fan but who knows. anyone doing contemporary aj liebling or joseph mitchell writing about oysters and steak dinners type stuff?

i don't think i've ever read a food culture book other than kitchen confidential or fast food nation. i'm an eater not a reader.

Botany of Desire is Michael Pollan's lesser known book, but maybe his most engrossing.

i'm probably the only person whose response to omnivore's dilemma was a desire to take up hunting