Week Three; Part 2

Part Two

Halfway through Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Anthony Bourdain has traveled through the first 25 years of his life, which has been almost entirely dedicated to cooking. This walk of destiny was started back off the coast of France on a small oyster boat, where Bourdain tried his first raw oyster, and loved it. He realized over time that food can do so many things, and he wanted to control food, so as to use these things. He has graduated from the CIA, and has proceeded to use that coveted degree, skills, and his work ethic to land job after job as chef of failing and flailing restaurants. He always comes in for the last gas, receiving his fat chef's pay check, blowing it on heroin and coke, and then skipping off to the next restaurant in need of aid. Bourdain himself regretted the time and money he wasted trying to be head chef and getting high; he could have taken an easier, lower paying job, worked his way up in a successful business, and been comfortably high up on the chain of command for as long as he pleased, but no-he had to get the big money now, the heroin now, the coke now. His lack of direction has really irritated me throughout this book, but it has had the effect of drawing me into the story. I'm glad to see his real-life character development unfolding however, as he is realizing he can't live the way he is if he ever expects to do what he wants to. It only seems logical that he makes some serious progress and changes in his life, considering where he is now in the world, with his own t.v. show, and the executive chef of Les Halles in New York.