book by Anthony Bourdain
, published in 2006. The book is a collection of 37 exotic, provocative, and humorous anecdotes and essays, many of them centered around food, followed by a 30-page fiction
piece ("A Chef's Christmas"). The book concludes with an appendix of commentaries on the various pieces, including when and why they were written.
The essays range from descriptions of restaurant-kitchen life; to various rants about places, people, and things Bourdain objects to; to lively accounts of far-flung world travels and remote ethnic life and food; to accolades of the unsung Latino
s who cook most fine-dining restaurant food in America; to glowing reports of cutting-edge chefs like Ferran Adrià
; to details of Bourdain's obsessions and pursuits when he is not working; to opinions and anecdotes on various other subjects.
Bourdain has organized the various essays and anecdotes into sections named for the five basic tastes:
- Salty
- Sweet
- Sour
- Bitter
- Umami
The book is, according to Bourdain, basically a collection of the best of his magazine and newspaper writings during the previous few years.
I remember one day I was coming home from kindergarten I—-well, I thought it was kindergarten, it turned out later I'd been working in a factory for two years... I was wondering 'cause it was always really hot and everyone was older than me, but, um, what did I know?
Don't you hate when people are late to work. And they always have the worst excuses. "Oh, I'm sorry I'm late, traffic." "Traffic, huh? How do you think I got here; helicoptered in!?"
I'm a — I'm a, um, a godmother which is just, that's fun to be a godmother, she is so precious, she's the light of my life, she's two... or five or something, and she's, uh... I don't know, I've never seen her — the pictures are precious, she just seems so, y'know... She lives clear across town, I don't have that kind of time, but, um... Well, I send money and stuff, it's not like I don't have a connection....
I don't want to get the same looks I give people when they get on a plane holding a baby: "That's a cute baby, just keep walking, keep walking, keep going, keep going...."
If we don't want to define ourselves by things as superficial as our appearances, we're stuck with the revolting alternative of being judged by our actions, by what we do.
We're told to go on living our lives as usual, because to do otherwise is to let the terrorists win, and really, what would upset the Taliban more than a gay woman wearing a suit in front of a room full of Jews?
Now we have hands-free phones, so you can focus on the thing you're really supposed to be doing ... chances are, if you need both of your hands to do something, your brain should be in on it too.
I have a terrible problem with procrastination... a friend told me, "Well, you should go to therapy. And I thought about it, but then I said, "Wait a minute. Why should I pay a stranger to listen to me talk when I can get strangers to pay to listen to me talk?" And that's when I got the idea of touring.