CHAPTER ONE? WEIRDLY HAUNTED BY BOURDAIN?

In a post holiday-coma I stared blindly at the TV before the show that suddenly came into focus happened to be the premier of THE TASTE—The newest in a seemingly endless line of reality shows in recent years about “my” restaurant industry—another testimony to our once sudden, now etched, rock-star status, complete with red-reject and green-approve buttons, panel-feuding a la American Idol, and close-up worried-face, breathtaking silent-drama save for the orchestral crescendos and base-drum-driven ominous warnings of a “taste” potentially judged unworthy by the sampling-lords—but only after this unannounced “commercial message from our sponsors”, aaand…fade-to-black, aaand, “Cut!”

It was all so damn hokey and ridiculous and yet I could not look away. In the center of the drama, there was former head chef and shithead, Anthony Bourdain—the food-service form of The Beatles, or a Presley representation—the guy who as much as anyone, shook his hips in a crude and establishment-humping manner, when he released Kitchen Confidential years ago in all of it’s unapologetic, testosterone-rich, pirate-like hiss!

I both hated Bourdain, and loved him—a classic doublethink—as he said things no chef should share, exposing our many dirty little secrets, while simultaneously stimulating that inner nasty that we humans struggle with—our whole, hopefully-nobody-knows reality of; “I shouldn’t enjoy this but I do.”

Bourdain launched us—pushed the envelope and the industry forward— singlehandedley as much as anyone before or since. He did it, he lived it, and he wrote about it, and the public ate it up and has since been fed a steady diet of our “inside”—our entrails—our backstage, behind-the-scenes, ever since.

I feel somehow that I should have hated that he sits on the panel, having switched his rebellious and fuck-you riffs for the formulaic Randy vs Simon bookends, engaging in cross-court tet-a-tetes while flanking the token hot-busty chef-babe and the snappy-dressed black-Swede chef Marcus in the center…but I don’t. I am not sure I am jealous, as I remain still over that damned grand-slam of a book, but I do sit in awe and proudly so, of this guy who seriously gets-it, and who now gets to sit for a living while continuing to speak his somewhat more gentle and refined mind for a (very good) living!

In one very small example of Chef Lord-dain’s superior comprehension; one of the cook-contestants had made a too-large, supposed-to-be-one-bite taste of a fried oyster rendition something-or-other. While the viewer watched all panelists have to nearly push/shove the contents with fingers-into-mouth, followed by an uncomfortable slow-chew while breathing through their noses—cupping their hands below chin in case of any falling overflow, before all then commented on the clumsy, over-portioned status of this particular entry into the entrée contest—it was Bourdain who accurately, and intuitively commented rhetorically; “I’ll bet you were given oysters larger than you had hoped for”, before voting “No” for reasons unrelated to the over- sized nature of the mammoth taste. Point being, only a guy who has stood in kitchens time and again through his pre-TV star years, looking at deliveries and product that were somehow wrong; too big or too small, too ripe or not enough, fatty or tough, would understand how a rock-star can take otherwise ridiculous lyrics or an old guitar, and ultimately adjust accordingly and blow us away.

Since reading Bourdain’s book, and writing about it in my very first column in Merrimack Valley magazine, I have envisioned writing from a similarly fresh and entertaining perspective. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won’t. But in the meantime, I continue to marvel at the attention and success that my industry now enjoys so much, after all those years of toiling in smokey obscurity, unshaven, and in poor health, with cigarette-stained fingers and aching feet while assholes assumed we would spit in their food if they complained. Now, though the feet still hurt, the guests are more inclined to suggest how we may have made the dish more delish, more inspiring—sans gluten, with a touch more acidity, or, how the intended al dente texture missed the mark ever so slightly to be sublime, unlike the way they had seen it on TV.