Chef Anthony Bourdain went into the fancy restaurant business for the company of the kitchen: “the drunks, sneak thieves, sluts and psychopaths.”
This is the good news, the sheer weirdness of the three-star strangers fondling your food, blanching your asparagus and searing your steak. They will suffer and steal to please you, or sometimes cheat to fool you with pork sauce on your veal — anything to get the boss and the band of brothers through another night of battle.
Anthony Bourdain started leaking the dirty secrets of high cookery in the New Yorker last year: Fish on a Monday menu is probably four days old. Bread, and butter, get recycled. Chefs save their suspicious and tough cuts of meat for people who want it “well done.” But now in hard covers he’s let us all in on the raging theater of the kitchen, where people with bad pasts find a new family and cook the very best food.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Anthony Bourdain, Chef, Les Halles Brasserie, author of Kitchen Confidential.