BOURDAIN: Well, when I wrote Kitchen Confidential I was a completely broke, stressed-out, forty-four-year-old working as he had always worked his entire life—in a not particularly great or famous restaurant kitchen, you know, standing next to a deep fryer…I’d never had health insurance, I’d never owned a car, I never paid my rent on time, I hadn’t filed my taxes in ten years. I was a frightened, angry, desperate character who had seen almost nothing of the world outside of kitchens.
You know, it’s ten years later, eleven years later, I’ve had almost ten years of the best job in the world, traveling around. I go anywhere I want, I’ve stayed in a lot of nice hotels, I’ve eaten in some of the best restaurants in the world, I’m friends with a lot of the greatest chefs, I’ve seen life high and low…I’ve lived a life of incredible—almost overnight from who I was back then, my life changed so drastically! You know I’m older, I don’t know that I’m wiser, but I’ve seen a hell of a lot more than I ever thought I would have seen. I’ve become corrupted by the process in the sense that I’ve become one of those TV characters that I had no understanding of at all when I was in the kitchen. And maybe the largest difference, you know, I’m a daddy now! I have a four-year-old little girl at home. You know, all the clichés about parenthood are of course absolutely true.
DUPLIEX: So one of the big changes is of course that you were a chef and now you’re a celebrity…
BOURDAIN: I don’t work for a living. I mean…
DUPLIEX: You’re making it sound good.
BOURDAIN: I mean, writing—I have no sympathy for anyone fortunate enough to get paid any kind of money to write whining about writer’s block or how hard it is, or some sort of internal torture. You’re doing it in a sitting position, so right away, you know? I spent my whole adult life on my feet. I feel very, very lucky that anybody even gives a shit what I think. It’s not something I’m used to, and it is a privilege to be able to write and have even eight people care what you’re saying.
DUPLIEX: There’s a great line in Medium Raw where you said being a heroin addict was fantastic preparation for being a celebrity.
BOURDAIN: Yeah!
DUPLIEX: [Laughing] Could you please explain?
BOURDAIN: Well, particularly in the world of television, but it’s also true I think in any media: there are a lot of people out there who are full of shit. People will tell you, especially in Hollywood, you know, they’re telling me, “We love your work,” “We really want to work with you,” “We’re terribly excited about this new project”—all of those things. You know, when you’re a junkie it is necessary that you very quickly—because you’re desperate, you only have ten dollars and you need to get well with it and you’re buying it on the street from some pretty hardcore characters, you’re surrounded by hustlers with a real imperative to hustle—you just develop a sort of a sixth sense. You become a pretty good judge of character: Is this person reliable, or are they full of shit? Are they the sort of person who is going to do what they say they’re going to do? And you develop this sort of feral sense, which I think is true of chefs as well. You look into someone’s eyes and you ask yourself—you believe there are only two kinds of people in this world. There are the type of people who say they’re going to do something tomorrow and they actually do it, and then there’s everybody else. And having been a heroin addict you have to develop at least some skills as far as judging which type of person that it might be you’re dealing with, or you end up dead, or well, you don’t end up on the street very long.
DUPLIEX: Do you think that’s why you were drawn to the kitchen or to the restaurant industry in the first place? To get some sort of structure?
BOURDAIN: I fell into the business accidentally. But it was certainly the only time in my life that I responded well to any kind of structure. I was grateful for it. It was the first time that I went home with any reason to be proud of myself. It was the first time that I cared about anybody else’s opinion of me. It was the first time I respected myself or anybody else. It was definitely the perfect mix of romance and, you know, piratical attitudes, and sex, and drugs, and rock and roll—that’s true. But you’re absolutely right. It was that structure, it was that first hierarchy and structure, and quantifiable organization, and value system, that I recognized that I needed it, and I was grateful for it. And I liked it, obviously. I fell in love with the life long before I started to get serious about food.
DUPLIEX: But it’s that anger, isn’t it, that you brought to your writing in a way? And that’s what made the writing so compelling, because it was very short, very direct, very short order in a way, very direct, very no-bullshit about your life. You had a lot of—
BOURDAIN: A lot of hyperbole. You know, in the kitchen, as a chef, when you’re angry at a cook or a waiter, they are for the moment, the worst, most miserable rat bastard on earth. But five minutes later, I love you, I want to bear your children, you are the greatest human being who ever walked the Earth. Those feelings can coexist or change pretty quickly. But you know I am angry. Clearly that fuels me. But I like to think that—like a number of other authors I can think of—the flip side of that is a sense of spoiled Romanticism, a disappointment with the way the world turned out. You know, it was supposed to be far more beautiful and romantic, and gentle, and I learned pretty early on it wasn’t going to be like that.
DUPLIEX: And now you punish people.
BOURDAIN: Yeah! Well, you know, it doesn’t make everything better to insult somebody, but…it helps.
[Audience laughter]
DUPLIEX: I’m going to throw you another question about this whole celebrity chef caper, because it is so much a part of our world at the moment. We had Marco Pierre White in town this week, you’ve described him as an icon, an iconic figure in our gastronomic universe. And yet here he was in Australia flogging Continental Stock Cubes, which broke my heart because I fell in love with him at the beginning—he was the hottest young chef I’d ever seen in my life and his food was just so beautiful and his head was in a very great place. But he’s a fucked up character, too. But—
BOURDAIN: Well, we all are, anyone who cooks.
DUPLIEX: Yes, we are, we are. But I found that a bit depressing. I mean he’s probably thinking he’s doing good business, and he’s running around the world and doing all that. But do you think that that is the trajectory of someone who—
BOURDAIN: Why should we hold chefs—Cooking is hard. It’s really hard. It breaks you down. A chef’s lifespan used to be, in the thirties, was thirty-seven years old. It is now about fifty-seven. Why do we demand, or insist, or expect chefs to die behind the stove, broken-assed, flat-footed, varicose veined, at fifty-seven? Why do we hold chefs to a higher standard than Keith Richards, or Iggy, or anyone else who’s incredibly cool and changed the world?
You know, Marco Pierre White—I would compare him to Orson Welles. Orson Welles made Citizen Kane. If he wants to end up making commercials for bad wine, good for him. I wish he’d been paid more money for it. He still made the greatest goddamn movie in American history to that point. He changed the world for the better. Marco has done his good works. What I admire about Marco in particular is that he reached the mountaintop—he got three stars*1 earlier than I think just about anyone else in the world had ever done. An Englishman who had never been to France cooking French food—and he didn’t want it anymore. He gave his stars back and said I’ve done my thing. I was to spend my days cashing checks, walking around in the English countryside shooting animals.
[Audience laughter]
DUPLIEX: That’s true.
BOURDAIN: And you know what? God bless him. Who better deserves to sell out any way they want, make a little money in their old age, than chefs?
DUPLIEX: Okay, but—
[Applause]
BOURDAIN: I mean, I’ll say this: I feel a lot better about Marco Pierre White cashing paychecks now for w
hatever he may do than for Paris Hilton getting paid for anything.
[Applause]
DUPLIEX: It’s true. Yeah, absolutely. However, where do you draw the line? Do you have a personal line in the sand that you will not cross, or is there some level of behavior that you go, “That chef can do this, can do that, can flog bad wine,” et cetera—is there a line where you go—
BOURDAIN: Okay, we all have a—let’s make it personal. There is a line for me: You know, Olive Garden, or Kentucky Fried Chicken…I would have a very hard time personally standing there saying this food is really delicious when I know it’s crap.
DUPLIEX: So, lying.
BOURDAIN: No, I’m happy to lie. [Audience laughter] It is not an integrity issue with me. It is a vanity issue. I don’t care how much money in the world, I’ve had plenty—I know what it’s like to wake up in the morning ashamed of what I did yesterday and I don’t like that feeling. It’s just, I don’t want to look in the mirror and see the Olive Garden or the TGI Friday guy. I just, it’s vanity. It doesn’t have anything to do with integrity.
DUPLIEX: Okay. My line for that, my line if they cross then I lose sight of them, the point of no return, is going on Dancing With the Stars.
BOURDAIN: Ah! Well I’ve been offered twice.
DUPLIEX: Offered twice?
BOURDAIN: Twice.
DUPLIEX: Again, it’s probably a vanity issue…?
BOURDAIN: Yeah, I mean, I’m not going on Celebrity Rehab yet, either. [Audience laughter] But, you know, talk to me in ten years. I mean, I’m doing well now!
DUPLIEX: Yep, it’s true. And I will. Okay, as a chef, what’s your idea of the customer from hell?
BOURDAIN: The customer from hell, the worst customer on earth, is the customer who’s decided beforehand, they’re already miserable the minute they walk in the door. And they’ve decided that they’re gonna feel better if they bully, speak condescendingly to, or mistreat floor staff. This is an unforgivable act to me. I mean if we go out to lunch together and you’re rude to your waiter and treat them like a piece of shit, talk down to them, or blame them for the kitchen’s mistakes, our relationship is dead and will always be dead. That sort of person working through personal issues—they’re not there to relax, get a little drunk and let things happen, have a meal. They’re just a miserable person who will probably bring that same misery to ruin every experience whether it’s a musical performance, or the food, a dinner, or the sex act.
[Audience laughter]
DUPLIEX: Quite. And do you have an idea of a chef from hell?
BOURDAIN: The chef from hell is the chef who’s been broken and just doesn’t care, you know? They have no pride, they’re unhappy, they don’t like their customers, they don’t like their owner, they don’t care whether their customers are happy anymore—I’ve been there! You know, all pride is gone…A heartbroken chef is the chef from hell.
Because almost all of them start out wanting to make good food, and for many, many years you were punished for that. You know, if you dared to try to serve food the way you knew it to be great, that you’d had it in France, or the way your training had taught you, you’d get slapped down by the customer. You know: There’s still blood in this steak! Tuna? That’s for cats! Squid? Ew, it’s ookie! Fish is oily and dark! You know, these were very much the common attitudes back in the 70s and 80s, so I think a good side effect of this admittedly annoying celebrity chef phenomenon is that people actually give a shit about what the chef thinks now, and are willing to give them a shot. But the one who’s out there toiling, just kind of slopping it out and doesn’t really care…that’s the chef from hell.
DUPLIEX: And is there such a thing as a novelist or a writer from hell for you?
BOURDAIN: Um…I don’t know. I don’t really know many writers. I don’t hang out with writers. I mean, ask yourself, you’re in a lifeboat adrift in the sea about to wash up on an island—which would you prefer to be marooned on an island with, a bunch of cooks or a bunch of writers?
[Audience laughter]
You know I enjoy a good book as much as, if not more than, anybody…but writers? [laughing] I have mixed emotions.
DUPLIEX: Okay, well, related to that I guess: restaurant critics. You’ve said a few mean things about restaurant critics in your day.
BOURDAIN: Well, in general it is a degraded profession. I’ve known a lot of bent—you know you said in the dressing room there are venal sins versus…
DUPLIEX: [Addressing the audience] Well, Anthony got into a bit of trouble for calling restaurant critics corrupt, and I actually said I’ve never met any restaurant critics that are venally—financially—corrupt, but I have met some that are what I’d call socially corrupt. So that they do have relationships with chefs, restaurateurs—
BOURDAIN: So, there’s a difference. First of all, there are plenty of food writers I know—The New York Times critic—that year after year after year, they go to extraordinary measures to insulate themselves from the swamp. Certainly, Jonathan Gold*2 is a hero of mine…I can think of a lot of people offhand who I would exclude from that description. But there are those who, I mean I know food critics also who demand free vacations, for instance—“I would like a free vacation in the Caribbean for my wife and myself”—demanding from the subjects of their reviews. Imagine! “You know, I’d really like a five-day vacation. I understand you’re working with a hotel in the Caribbean. You know my wife and I would really enjoy a week down there all expenses paid, with bungalow, and free room service…Can you arrange that?”
DUPLIEX: Are you talking about anyone in particular?
BOURDAIN: Mmm, that’s hypothetical speaking. [Audience laughter] Your libel laws here—I think it’s libel tourism, right? You could sue if you get bad reviews, so I’m gonna leave that alone. There are people who, back in the day, and some of these characters are still around, who I can well remember shaking restaurateurs down for cash. But much more common are the people who become corrupted by what is inevitably a corrupting process. It would be impossible for me to be a food critic, okay? All my friends are chefs. I’ve been compromised by my personal relationships with these chefs over the years. My palate has become corrupted, because unlike most of you I’ve eaten at El Bulli*3 a lot. I’ve eaten at Robuchon*4. To me, a 12-course tasting menu at one of the great restaurants in the world is often a burden. I’m bored with truffles.
[Audience laughter]
What kind of critical ability can I, what can I say that is meaningful to an ordinary person when I’ve lost my ability to be delighted by things that to most others would be a once-in-a-lifetime and incredible experience? But the most common form of corruption is of course just like reporters, you know, White House correspondents—the pressure is on food writers. I don’t want to write about my favorite lemon meringue pie every week. I don’t want to write muffin recipes. I want to go to restaurants and live a good life and write interesting things. In order to do that I need access. I need people in that life to tell me things. Now these people have their own interests which is, I want food critics to write good things about me. So I’m going to send you a few extra snacks, I’m going to take you for a little private tour of my kitchen, we’ll have special little candlelight meals together where I’ll preview my new menu, maybe I’m gonna give you a backrub, invite you over to my house…
[Audience laughter]
You know, at the end of the day you’re going to be less likely to say anything bad about me. There’s a popular food guide in New York, it’s the industry standard. Every high-end restaurant in New York buys them by the thousands—five, six thousand copies of this guide. And if they don’t buy five or six this year, they get a call saying, “How come you’re not buying as many?” “Well, you weren’t so nice to me this year.” “That’s okay, we’ll fix it.”…That ain’t right, you know? So, when a journalist needs access and the only acces
s they’re going to get is, especially when they’re not getting paid to eat at these restaurants a lot—they don’t have as much of a budget as, say, the Times, do to go out to fine dining restaurants—they rely on their subjects to give them good stuff. Whether that’s money, or free food, or extra courses, but more often than not just access. And if they don’t get it, some of them tend to get cranky. And then there’s payback involved. So, I don’t think it’s necessarily the most evil thing in the world, but I think it’s useful if you’re writing about food, certainly if you’re critiquing food, maybe there should be term limits.
DUPLIEX: Term limits?
BOURDAIN: Yeah, maybe after five years you should gracefully move on to some other sector. Because you’ve been swimming in the same sort of blood temperature hot tub for a long time—you’re gonna catch something.
[Audience laughter]
DUPLIEX: Well I suppose the restaurant critic is in some sort of position between the restaurant industry, the chef, the kitchen, and us the diners, and it’s just trying to explain one to the other a little bit in many ways. And that is your unique position, as well, because as a chef you know what’s going on out there, and yet as a writer you’re at the front many times observing quite rigorously what’s going on.
There’s one story in Medium Raw, my favorite, that is simply a morning in the life of a fish filleter in a restaurant in New York called Le Bernardin. The fish comes in in the morning, this guy’s got his knives, he fillets the fish, he places it in the way the chefs want it, ready to go for their lunch—that’s it. That’s the entire story. But actually, had a chef written it, with all the knowledge of what had to go down, it could still be boring. If a writer, a journalist, a rigorous observer, had written it, it could still be boring. But somebody who can fuse those two things with respect—so much respect was coming off the pages about this guy because he’s so good at what he does—
Anthony Bourdain: The Last Interview Page 3