KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL Part 1 Appetizer – by Anthony Bourdain

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Portions of this book have appeared previously elsewhere: much of the ‘From Our Kitchen To
Your Table’ and a few other stray bits of business appeared in The New Yorker, under the title,
‘Don’t Eat Before Reading This’. The ‘Mission to Tokyo’ section appeared first in Food Arts, and
readers of my short story for Canongate Press’s Rover’s Return collection will see that the
fictional protagonist in my contribution, ‘Chef’s Night Out’ had a humiliating experience on a busy
broiler station much like my own. I’d also like to thank Joel Rose, to whom I owe everything . . .
Karen Rinaldi and Panio Gianopoulous at Bloomsbury USA. Jamie Byng, David Remnick, the
evil Stone Brothers (Rob and Web), Tracy Westmoreland, José de Meireilles and Philippe
Lajaunie, Steven Tempel, Michael Batterberry, Kim Witherspoon, Sylvie Rabineau, David Fiore,
Scott Bryan, and my ass-kicking crew at Les Halles: Franck, Eddy, Isidoro, Carlos, Omar, Angel,
Bautista and Janine.
Cooks Rule.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I have changed the names of some of the individuals and some of the
restaurants that are a part of my story.

APPETIZER
A NOTE FROM THE CHEF
DON’T GET ME WRONG: I love the restaurant business. Hell, I’m still in the restaurant businessa lifetime, classically trained chef who, an hour from now, will probably be roasting bones for
demi-glace and butchering beef tenderloins in a cellar prep kitchen on lower Park Avenue.
I’m not spilling my guts about everything I’ve seen, learned and done in my long and checkered
career as dishwasher, prep drone, fry cook, grillardin, saucier, sous-chef and chef because I’m
angry at the business, or because I want to horrify the dining public. I’d still like to be a chef, too,
when this thing comes out, as this life is the only life I really know. If I need a favor at four
o’clock in the morning, whether it’s a quick loan, a shoulder to cry on, a sleeping pill, bail money,
or just someone to pick me up in a car in a bad neighborhood in the driving rain, I’m definitely
not calling up a fellow writer. I’m calling my sous-chef, or a former sous-chef, or my saucier,
someone I work with or have worked with over the last twenty-plus years.
No, I want to tell you about the dark recesses of the restaurant underbelly-a subculture whose
centuries-old militaristic hierarchy and ethos of ‘rum, buggery and the lash’ make for a mix of
unwavering order and nerve-shattering chaos-because I find it all quite comfortable, like a nice
warm bath. I can move around easily in this life. I speak the language. In the small, incestuous
community of chefs and cooks in New York City, I know the people, and in my kitchen, I know
how to behave (as opposed to in real life, where I’m on shakier ground). I want the professionals
who read this to enjoy it for what it is: a straight look at a life many of us have lived and breathed
for most of our days and nights to the exclusion of ‘normal’ social interaction. Never having had
a Friday or Saturday night off, always working holidays, being busiest when the rest of the world
is just getting out of work, makes for a sometimes peculiar world-view, which I hope my fellow
chefs and cooks will recognize. The restaurant lifers who read this may or may not like what I’m
doing. But they’ll know I’m not lying.
I want the readers to get a glimpse of the true joys of making really good food at a professional
level. I’d like them to understand what it feels like to attain the child’s dream of running one’s
own pirate crew-what it feels like, looks like and smells like in the clatter and hiss of a big city
restaurant kitchen. And I’d like to convey, as best I can, the strange delights of the language,
patois and death’s-head sense of humor found on the front lines. I’d like civilians who read this
to get a sense, at least, that this life, in spite of everything, can be fun.
As for me, I have always liked to think of myself as the Chuck Wepner of cooking. Chuck was a
journeyman ‘contender’, referred to as the ‘Bayonne Bleeder’ back in the Ali-Frazier era. He
could always be counted on to last a few solid rounds without going down, giving as good as he
got. I admired his resilience, his steadiness, his ability to get it together, to take a beating like a
man.
So, it’s not Superchef talking to you here. Sure, I graduated CIA, knocked around Europe,
worked some famous two-star joints in the city-damn good ones, too. I’m not some embittered
hash-slinger out to slag off my more successful peers (though I will when the opportunity
presents itself). I’m usually the guy they call in to some high-profile operation when the first chef
turns out to be a psychopath, or a mean, megalomaniacal drunk. This book is about street-level
cooking and its practitioners. Line cooks are the heroes. I’ve been hustling a nicely paid living
out of this life for a long time-most of it in the heart of Manhattan, the ‘bigs’-so I know a few
things. I’ve still got a few moves left in me.
Of course, there’s every possibility this book could finish me in the business. There will be horror
stories. Heavy drinking, drugs, screwing in the dry-goods area, unappetizing revelations about
bad food-handling and unsavory industry-wide practices. Talking about why you probably
shouldn’t order fish on a Monday, why those who favor well-done get the scrapings from the
bottom of the barrel, and why seafood frittata is not a wise brunch selection won’t make me any
more popular with potential future employers. My naked contempt for vegetarians, sauce-onsiders, the ‘lactose-intolerant’ and the cooking of the Ewok-like Emeril Lagasse is not going to
get me my own show on the Food Network. I don’t think I’ll be going on ski weekends with Andre
Soltner anytime soon or getting a back rub from that hunky Bobby Flay. Eric Ripert won’t be
calling me for ideas on tomorrow’s fish special. But I’m simply not going to deceive anybody
about the life as I’ve seen it.
It’s all here: the good, the bad and the ugly. The interested reader might, on the one hand, find
out how to make professional-looking and tasting plates with a few handy tools-and on the other
hand, decide never to order the moules marinières again. Tant pis, man.
For me, the cooking life has been a long love affair, with moments both sublime and ridiculous.
But like a love affair, looking back you remember the happy times best-the things that drew you
in, attracted you in the first place, the things that kept you coming back for more. I hope I can
give the reader a taste of those things and those times. I’ve never regretted the unexpected left
turn that dropped me in the restaurant business. And I’ve long believed that good food, good
eating is all about risk. Whether we’re talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or
working for organized crime ‘associates’, food, for me, has always been an adventure.

Of course, there’s every possibility this book could finish me in the business. There will be horror
stories. Heavy drinking, drugs, screwing in the dry-goods area, unappetizing revelations about
bad food-handling and unsavory industry-wide practices. Talking about why you probably
shouldn’t order fish on a Monday, why those who favor well-done get the scrapings from the
bottom of the barrel, and why seafood frittata is not a wise brunch selection won’t make me any
more popular with potential future employers. My naked contempt for vegetarians, sauce-onsiders, the ‘lactose-intolerant’ and the cooking of the Ewok-like Emeril Lagasse is not going to
get me my own show on the Food Network. I don’t think I’ll be going on ski weekends with Andre
Soltner anytime soon or getting a back rub from that hunky Bobby Flay. Eric Ripert won’t be
calling me for ideas on tomorrow’s fish special. But I’m simply not going to deceive anybody
about the life as I’ve seen it.
It’s all here: the good, the bad and the ugly. The interested reader might, on the one hand, find
out how to make professional-looking and tasting plates with a few handy tools-and on the other
hand, decide never to order the moules marinières again. Tant pis, man.
For me, the cooking life has been a long love affair, with moments both sublime and ridiculous.
But like a love affair, looking back you remember the happy times best-the things that drew you
in, attracted you in the first place, the things that kept you coming back for more. I hope I can
give the reader a taste of those things and those times. I’ve never regretted the unexpected left
turn that dropped me in the restaurant business. And I’ve long believed that good food, good
eating is all about risk. Whether we’re talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or
working for organized crime ‘associates’, food, for me, has always been an adventure.