I'm blowing through books this past month or so! I can't complain, winter is perfect reading time because the weather is iffy at best, and constantly cold. My apartment is freezing because gas costs are through the roof (amiright?), so I'm most likely covered in a pile of blankets with a book in front of my face.
I just finished reading Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain. I really liked it. It helped that I've watched his shows for years, and I could hear him talking as I read. It's really a new experience to read a book that way. If you can hear an author speak (or if they have recorded their own audiobook) I would absolutely go for it. If you get familiar with their voice, the cadence of the way you read their words completely changes (in a good way).
Just a note before I get into things: I used to work in "the industry". Not in a restaurant. I worked for a few years as a baker/assistant at a big catering company in Connecticut, and I actually still work there on weekends in the summer (wedding season). I loved that job. Really and truly. I loved what I did and loved the people I worked with, the environment, everything (why else would I work weekends in addition to my regular 40 hours!?). Do I have the mean, exhausting restaurant experience that Tony had? No. I honestly don't think I could handle working full time in a restaurant kitchen. But I do have a sense--fleeting as it may be--of what he's talking about with that, and full familiarity with a lot of other things. It was great to read something so familiar, but also to learn something from it (a lot, actually).
(I think I abused the concept of parentheses in that last paragraph.)
What I like most about the book is his analysis of behavior in the industry. It's something I desperately miss now that I work in an office. In the food industry, there are things you do and things you don't do, and they're mostly black and white, cut and dry. Do a good, efficient job. Don't slack on your work or let your co-workers down. Variations on these themes. And if there's something that's unsaid, if the line is crossed, someone will say it. Or scream it, depending on how bad the mistake is. I saw a prep chef drop a raw chicken breast in a bowl of sliced tomatoes, pick it out, wipe it off, and keep working. He wasn't pulled aside...the chef screamed at him right there, immediately, in front of everyone. Whether that prep chef didn't think anything of it or knew that he was wrong all along, I personally think it was more effective to get it out of the way then and there. No chef has time to have meetings all day long reprimanding people for things he saw earlier. He has work to do too. No one is that idle in a kitchen.
Raw chicken=salmonella and other yucky things.
Now that I work in an office (I know it sounds bad to say it), I wish screaming was an option. There isn't that kind of regulation of behavior in an office. In the kitchen, you are working at your station. If you want to carry on a conversation, do it, but never ever stop working. Stay out of the way as much as possible and get things done as quickly as you can. In an office, too many people want to waste time because there is no chef looking over their shoulder. Too many people interrupt. People are interrupted on their lunch breaks. It's not the end of the world, but when I worked in catering, my lunch break was the 5-10 minutes it took me to scarf down food, and if you wanted to talk to me about work, well, tant pis.
(Tough luck.)
(Those parentheses again.)
But the book. It was good. I wish I had read it when it came out because the tell-all-ness of the book was lost on me, having seen and heard most of Anthony Bourdain's subsequent work before ever having read Kitchen Confidential. I bet this really knocked the socks off of some people other there when it first came out. Especially if they've never been a fly on the wall in a working kitchen.
That being said, I'm onto my next literary entertainment: Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook by the same sailor-mouthed gentleman. A few months ago, Jim's mom went to the thrift store and came back with two titles for each of us--two Stephen Kings for Jim, and two Bourdains for me. How well does she know us, huh? That thrilled me to no end!
I just finished reading Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain. I really liked it. It helped that I've watched his shows for years, and I could hear him talking as I read. It's really a new experience to read a book that way. If you can hear an author speak (or if they have recorded their own audiobook) I would absolutely go for it. If you get familiar with their voice, the cadence of the way you read their words completely changes (in a good way).
Just a note before I get into things: I used to work in "the industry". Not in a restaurant. I worked for a few years as a baker/assistant at a big catering company in Connecticut, and I actually still work there on weekends in the summer (wedding season). I loved that job. Really and truly. I loved what I did and loved the people I worked with, the environment, everything (why else would I work weekends in addition to my regular 40 hours!?). Do I have the mean, exhausting restaurant experience that Tony had? No. I honestly don't think I could handle working full time in a restaurant kitchen. But I do have a sense--fleeting as it may be--of what he's talking about with that, and full familiarity with a lot of other things. It was great to read something so familiar, but also to learn something from it (a lot, actually).
(I think I abused the concept of parentheses in that last paragraph.)
What I like most about the book is his analysis of behavior in the industry. It's something I desperately miss now that I work in an office. In the food industry, there are things you do and things you don't do, and they're mostly black and white, cut and dry. Do a good, efficient job. Don't slack on your work or let your co-workers down. Variations on these themes. And if there's something that's unsaid, if the line is crossed, someone will say it. Or scream it, depending on how bad the mistake is. I saw a prep chef drop a raw chicken breast in a bowl of sliced tomatoes, pick it out, wipe it off, and keep working. He wasn't pulled aside...the chef screamed at him right there, immediately, in front of everyone. Whether that prep chef didn't think anything of it or knew that he was wrong all along, I personally think it was more effective to get it out of the way then and there. No chef has time to have meetings all day long reprimanding people for things he saw earlier. He has work to do too. No one is that idle in a kitchen.
Raw chicken=salmonella and other yucky things.
Now that I work in an office (I know it sounds bad to say it), I wish screaming was an option. There isn't that kind of regulation of behavior in an office. In the kitchen, you are working at your station. If you want to carry on a conversation, do it, but never ever stop working. Stay out of the way as much as possible and get things done as quickly as you can. In an office, too many people want to waste time because there is no chef looking over their shoulder. Too many people interrupt. People are interrupted on their lunch breaks. It's not the end of the world, but when I worked in catering, my lunch break was the 5-10 minutes it took me to scarf down food, and if you wanted to talk to me about work, well, tant pis.
(Tough luck.)
(Those parentheses again.)
But the book. It was good. I wish I had read it when it came out because the tell-all-ness of the book was lost on me, having seen and heard most of Anthony Bourdain's subsequent work before ever having read Kitchen Confidential. I bet this really knocked the socks off of some people other there when it first came out. Especially if they've never been a fly on the wall in a working kitchen.
That being said, I'm onto my next literary entertainment: Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook by the same sailor-mouthed gentleman. A few months ago, Jim's mom went to the thrift store and came back with two titles for each of us--two Stephen Kings for Jim, and two Bourdains for me. How well does she know us, huh? That thrilled me to no end!
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