”For all my bluster, I was scared shitless. Writing about the facts of my life here, it seems like a logical progression, This happened and then that ”For all my bluster, I was scared shitless. Writing about the facts of my life here, it seems like a logical progression, This happened and then that happened and I slowly learned this and by the time this moment came I was ready. But in between every triumph or epiphany I’ve described in this book, there were five hundred moments of doubt. There were embarrassments and mistakes, people I pissed off or disappointed, chances I squandered. There were dishes that sucked and services that made me want to tear my eyeballs out. And there was the constant thrum of depression in the back of my skull.”
I’ve become a recent fan of David Chang. Well, fan might be too strong a word. More accurately, I’ve recently discovered an appreciation for David Chang. I watched a couple of episodes of his show Ugly Delicious, and even though I didn’t love the episodes the same way as I did Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown series, I felt this tingling in my head that this Chang guy was someone I needed to keep an eye on. He might eventually become someone interesting.
Soon after watching a couple of episodes of his show, I had one of those book magic moments when I was contacted about reading an ARC of his memoir. I try to make sure that I listen when the universe is speaking to me...I said, send me a copy. I had a similar feeling about Ali Wong’s memoir. I had just watched one of her scorching, hilariously irreverent tv specials when I was asked about reading her book. I usually like books to percolate and simmer out there for a while before I decide to read them, but there was something about the groundbreaking intelligence of these two personalities that reassured me that my time would not be wasted.
It was most assuredly not wasted.
In the intro to Chang’s book, he talked about the struggles with selecting a cover. He had an idea; his creative team had a different idea, and his publisher had an even more different idea. They sent mock up covers to a focus group, which if I were an eye-roller, I would have rolled my eyes, but in this case he found out some very interesting information. ”Okay, so my face and my name were the problem. I have to admit that was a little confusing for someone who (1) has historically been sensitive about the particulars of my appearance and the general Asianness of my face and name, and (2) was already struggling to understand why people would want to read this book. But again, I respect data. We deemphasized the name and removed the face. If it helps you enjoy the book, I have no problem with your imagining it was written by a white author named David Chance.”
What is interesting is that David admits he is a twinkie. He might look Asian on the outside, but he is white on the inside. He is the youngest boy in his family, and when I watched the Thanksgiving episode of Ugly Delicious, it was obvious that his parents were at a different economic level when they raised him from when they raised his older siblings. His mother calls him Baby King, and that might explain a lot of why he has been successful with opening restaurants, but also why he has been unsuccessful in many of his interactions with people on a personal level. His anger issues feel so rooted in privilege, even though over time he has discovered some deeper psychological reasons for his anger. So the focus group saw him as an Asian and nothing beyond that, and they considered his Asian features to be a detriment to them enjoying the book. *sigh* David joked about this, but there is no doubt that this confirmed much of his inherent insecurities about the way he looks.
America really needs to grow up and evolve out of its inherent racism, sexism...well, all -isms.
One thing I want to make clear is that, for all his thorns, he clearly exposes the barbs and how they have made him bleed. When he had a consultant analyze his business, one of the first things he was told by this expert was that he was really fortunate to be so successful, considering how many people in the structure of his business hate him. His rocket rise has been amazing. He was a man with the right idea and the right execution at the right time. He is, for all intents and purposes, a made man...at least until the next great concept person comes along and knocks him out of the clouds.
I don’t really feel that will happen. He is always questioning why he believes things, why he does things a certain way, and his food menu will always get stale for him long before his customers get tired of it. If he can now figure out how to be happier with himself, he can maybe be a better person for everybody else to know, too. Kudos to him for ripping off the bandages (he’s seriously a walking mummy) and talking candidly about what drove him and also what has held him back.
One of his favorite quotes, that really does fit his personality, is from the Ethan Hawke move Gattaca:”’This is how I did it, Anton,’ says Vincent. ‘I never saved anything for the swim back.’” For those who haven’t seen the movie, that quote may not mean much, but for us who have watched that movie many times, it is one of the moments in cinema history that defines what is best about us being mutts. We can be hindered by our perceived weaknesses, or we can strive to be more than the sum of our parts.
He shared a couple of interactions that he had with Bourdain. Tony was the guy he would occasionally meet up with to chat and in the process hopefully recenter himself. I only wish that Tony had weighed how important he was to so many people before he took his life and how many people, such as Chang, benefited from his acquired wisdom. I worry about the long-term, negative influence his suicide will have on those who respected him and, in some cases, idolized him. For a guy like David, who suffers from serious bouts of depression, I do hope that Bourdain’s decision does not unduly influence him. Life will continue to throw David curveballs. It doesn’t matter how rich someone is or how successful they are; none of us get through this life without facing major, critical, soul-crushing losses and setbacks.
As David says at one point in the book,...so you might be asking yourself how I’m still alive?
Currently, Chang is opening new restaurants as quickly as he can. He sees that as being successful. He no longer cooks. He has become a personality. He is the face of his expansion. He has found people to manage his restaurants, and there are certainly many sighs of relief from kitchen staff, but his creative input will be essential for the needed evolution of his original concepts. I ultimately don’t think he will be happy with the expansion of his ideas into a national conglomeration of cookie cutter store fronts. As he says, a workaholic only hits bottom when he reaches the top of his profession. Well, he is about to hit bottom, and then what? If he survives his success, I wouldn’t be surprised to find him in twenty years working in the kitchen of a Midnight Diner in Tokyo.
He is precocious and irritating, but he is equally fascinating and honest. I really felt like I had some good Chang synergy going as I read this book and watched episodes of Ugly Delicious. His 33 rules for being a chef in the back of the book will also benefit anyone who wants to be successful in business. One of my favorites was #3, where he urges people to go to college rather than culinary school and “study Shakespeare or the Medicis, the Ottomans, Genghis Khan, the Aztecs, Jared Diamond, Darwinism.” To be successful at one thing you have to know about a lot of things. Broaden your exposure to what the world has to offer, and that stew of knowledge is where the creative ideas will be spawned.
A Russian oligarch, with an unsavory past (are there any other kind?), has assembled a group of international chefs for a night of feasting
[image]
A Russian oligarch, with an unsavory past (are there any other kind?), has assembled a group of international chefs for a night of feasting. Before the oligarch lets them go, he challenges them to play the samurai game of 100 candles. Each chef needs to tell a story featuring demons, ghosts, or revealing other teeth chattering, inspiring, supernatural beings, whose names you do not speak above a soft whisper.
The theme of these stories, of course, revolves around food and revenge, which for those who have followed Anthony Bourdain’s career know he speaks of with reverence often. I might even speculate that some of these tales give Anthony a chance to enact some literary revenge on some particularly nasty individuals he had the misfortune of meeting in his food service days. Only Anthony would know the true targets of his Hungry Ghost revenge, but hopefully, when he saw the proofs of this graphic novel, he chuckled over the eviscerated bodies of some old enemies.
The last correspondence between Anthony Bourdain and his collaborator, Joel Rose, was the dedication for the book.
“This book is dedicated to the memory and enduring allure of EC Comics and their pre-Comics Code masterworks: The Haunt of Fear, the Vault of Horror, and Tales from the Crypt (nee The Crypt of Terror), and their master storytellers: The Old Witch, the Vault Keeper, and the Crypt Keeper. May resting in peace not be an option.”
When I was in my heyday of comic book reading, from about age 10-14, I didn’t even know those wonderful horror comic books existed. They didn’t show up on the shelves of my comic book dealer, who also doubled as the biggest drug dealer in the area, commonly called a pharmacist. He had superhero comics by the wheelbarrow load, Archie comics (isn’t Riverdale, by the way, proving to be so much fun?), and fortunately for me, Weird Western Tales, where I was first introduced to Jonah Hex. Unfortunately, EC Comics shuttered their doors long before I was reading comics, so in the late 1970s I would have had to be very fortunate to run across them. It wasn’t until I was in college and working in the used book industry that I ran across a batch of these old horror comics. I took them home and binged them. I was really impressed with the level of writing and the true terror they were able to inspire in me. I wish I had bought them instead of returning them to the shelves of the bookstore, where they disappeared in the blink of an eye into the greedy hands of wild eyed collectors, who were flinging money at us while trying to hide the boners inspired by their unexpected discovery of a goldmine of comics.
I’m not exaggerating.
Interestingly enough, Joel Rose mentions the influence that Lafcadio Hearn’s book Kwaidan: Japanese Ghost Stories had on the writing of this graphic novel, along with several other books he mentions in the Stirring the Pot essay in the back of the book. I’ve had Lafcadio Hearn on my radar for years, and now with a gentle nudge from Anthony, I’m going to make sure his book on Japanese ghost stories queues up in my reading list this year.
As a bonus, Anthony includes five Bourdain recipes with explicit instructions on how to make these mouth watering dishes in your own kitchen.
Who doesn’t need a splash of Food Noir Horror in their reading schedule, especially with a splash of that acerbic Bourdain wit which frequently had me muttering to myself...I see you Anthony, with your red rimmed eyes and mischievous grin?
”Eating well, on the other hand, is about submission. It’s about giving up all vestiges of control, about entrusti
***RIP Anthony Bourdain 1956-2018***
”Eating well, on the other hand, is about submission. It’s about giving up all vestiges of control, about entrusting your fate entirely to someone else. It’s about turning off the mean, manipulative, calculating, and shrewd person inside you, and slipping heedlessly into a new experience as if it were a warm bath. It’s about shutting down the radar and letting good things happen. When that happens to a professional chef, it’s a rare and beautiful thing.
Anthony Bourdain took his own life on June 8th, 2018, in the Le Chambard Hotel in Kaysersberg-Vignoble, Haut-Rhin, France. When I heard the news, I was shocked, and then I was surprised that I was shocked. I’ve been following Bourdain’s career since his show No Reservations launched on the Travel Channel. I even watched the shorter lived Layover, but where he really put his best work together was when he moved to CNN and launched Parts Unknown. I gleefully read his first book Kitchen Confidential and came away from that reading thinking I should have been a CHEF. They seemed to be the epitome of cool! I can only imagine how many people have been inspired to try to make a living in the food industry after reading Bourdain’s incendiary book. In the 1980s, chefs started to become rock stars, and Bourdain rode that wave of expanded interest better than just about anyone. He was bright, witty, sarcastic, unafraid of the camera, and even willing to be embarrassed to give his audience more entertainment value.
Sometimes we just winced.
He was acerbic, mean spirited, world weary, kind, thoughtful, and honest about his true beliefs. Certainly, there was a part of me that wanted to be him because his life seemed so free, so uninhibited, so epically fulfilling. Like some medieval maps though, there were parts of his life labelled... here be dragons, here be demons.
He’d been a junkie, a petty thief, a man of uncertain character. His story was one of remarkable self renewal, a rediscovery of purpose. A phoenix rising from the ashes.
The demons in his head had never left. They were in a dark corner of his brain doing push ups, lifting barbells, hitting punching bags, skipping rope, getting ready for the moment when someone leaves the gate unlocked.
This book is a collection of essays, all originally published prior to 2006, that Bourdain had written mostly for magazine publication. In these short pieces, he was angry at one moment and exuberant in the next. He was mad at obese people taking up too much space on a subway or a plane. He was dismissive of other celebrity chefs. As expected he shared the details of wonderful meals he had eaten in exquisite, mouth watering detail. He instructed us on how to interact with the wait staff at restaurants and believe me some people need some help with this. He tried to eviscerate food in Las Vegas, but soon learned to appreciate it with grudging respect. Anthony Bourdain was a lot of things, but he was not a snob.
He loved Vietnamese food and admitted that great Vietnamese food can be found all over the world, but the rapture of eating pho or bun cha on a cheap plastic stool in the street is a whole different experience. ”But Vietnamese food in Vietnam, when outside the window it’s Hanoi--a slice of an apartment building with faded, peeling facade just visible across the street; women hanging out laundry; the chatter of noodle and fruit vendors coming from one flight down; the high, throaty vibrations of countless motorbikes…” All of that natural gritty ambiance added to the eating experience.
I always say books are never just books, and food certainly is never just food. Once I’ve experienced great food in a country and I taste it again, even at my own dinner table, the memories of eating that dish in Scotland, San Francisco, Budapest, Paris, Rome, Prague, or New York still haunt my tongue and elevate my enjoyment of that food beyond just the flavors and spices that make it great.
Being the book crazed fiend that I am, I appreciated, almost as much as his talent with expanding my palate and making foreign climates accessible, his great love for books. He mentioned his favorite books at several points in these essays, but I’ve also seen him talk about his love of books in interviews and as segments during the filming of his TV shows. Here are just a few I’ve seen mentioned:
Ways of Escape and The Quiet American by Graham Greene Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell The Kitchen by Nicolas Freeling The Belly of Paris by Emile Zola Flash in the Pan by David Blum Stoner by John Williams True Grit by Charles Portis Between Meals by A. J. Liebling The Devil all the Time by Donald Ray Pollock The Works of Daniel Woodrell The Works of William T. Vollman The Works of Ross MacDonald.
Bourdain was, without a doubt, a serious, dedicated reader.
While reading this book, every time he says something like ”Every day that Gabrielle Hamilton (owner of the restaurant Prune and author of Blood, Bones, and Butter) likes me? It’s reason to live” or he reacts to something by saying that it is worth hanging yourself in a hotel shower, I felt a sharp pain in my stomach. I watched the eight episodes of season eight of Parts Unknown this weekend, and sprinkled throughout those episodes are several moments where he says, ”It’s a reason to live,” which of course carried a poignancy, knowing that on June 8th, 2018, he had run out of reasons to live.
I’ve heard psychologists discuss the signs of suicide, but those signs could be applied to just about everyone I know. As a nation, we are so unhappy and stressed out of our minds that it shouldn’t be a surprise to us that the suicide rates have reached epidemic proportions. On average, there are 121 suicides a day in the United States. If 121 people a day were dying from say Avian Flu, we would be freaking out. I’m sure all of those people showed “signs.” I’m sure I show signs on a weekly basis, like every time I look at my TBR stacks, but I would be equally depressed if I didn’t have stacks of books waiting TBR, as well.
I can always count on books being a reason to live.
Anthony was in a dark place for the few days before he killed himself, but he was routinely depressed. So how do any of us know what THE sign is? How do we gauge the point with which a friend or family member has reached the tipping point?
Anthony Bourdain’s suicide seemed so impulsive. What if he had been able to wait just one more day? I have no doubt that he had planned it, thought about it, considered it many times over his lifetime, so like a good sous chef, I would bet he had done his prep work. For all his brash, prickly exterior, it was evident to those of us who have followed his career for a long time that all of that toughness was just a shell hiding the kind, gentle soul beneath. There was more than a bit of the romantic poet in him, maybe more Byron than Shelley. He could be a harsh critic, especially on himself. In the closing pages of this book, he criticized each of these articles and explained some of the external and internal forces that were conspiring to influence his writing at the time. He offset the cynical, seen-it-all attitude with a lyrical, jubilant, almost boyish awe of those he admired, whether they be a chef, a writer, a painter, a musician, a taxi driver, a bartender, or a Mexican dish washer.
I haven’t forgiven him yet.
His mother, in an interview after his suicide, said, “He had everything. Success beyond his wildest dreams. Money beyond his wildest dreams.” I can feel the confusion and anger in his mother’s words. It is selfish for me to be angry at him, but I am. I needed him out there flailing away at the world and being at least one bastion of sensible truth against the Left, the Right, and the preconceived notions of small minds.
He took joy in being wrong about a place or a person, especially when he found out a place he had dismissed had hidden gems or a person he had dissed had hidden depths. The way he saw the world was frankly inspiring.
A person might first watch his show for the travel or the food, but once hooked, they kept watching for the insights into foreign cultures, the real people, the commentary on global politics, the philosophy about living a good life, and the friendships that are available to all of us if we are open to having them.
He gave us hope for what our life could be.
Did we fail you, Tony? Did we disappoint you?
My compass might be spinning, but I’ll eventually get it locked back into due North again. What else can I do?
”And so I took my first step along the long, bully-laden, work obsessed, sleep-deprived, nicotine- and caffeine-fueled, passionate, hot and winding ro”And so I took my first step along the long, bully-laden, work obsessed, sleep-deprived, nicotine- and caffeine-fueled, passionate, hot and winding road that would end with three Michelin stars.”
I don’t cook, but oddly enough I enjoy reading about chefs and the skillet laden road they travel to create food that makes their customers close their eyes and raise their hands to the food gods in supplication.
It is really all Anthony Bourdain’s fault. I read Kitchen Confidential after catching his show on the Travel Channel. I enjoyed his humor on the show and hoped that his amusing commentary would show up in the book. Reading the book was just like how I would expect a conversation to go with Bourdain. He was hilariously irreverent about everything. He certainly convinced me that cutting edge chefs had a lot in common with the dissenting, maverick attitudes of the gunslingers of the Old West. Only pistols at noon are exchanged for frying pans.
”From the moment my chef pals and I got a look at Marco Pierre White’s first cookbook--and at photos of the Man Himself, in all his haggard, debauched-looking, obsessively driven glory---we dreamed of nothing more than to be just like him. He made history.” -- Anthony Bourdain
To say that White is driven is an understatement. His desire to be the best chef in not only Britain but in the world completely dominated his life from the time he became conscious in the morning until the time he passed out at night. He wanted three Michelin stars more than he wanted to be rich or famous. He blew up his marriages. He threw condiments at his staff. He called them demeaning names. He tortured them. It was impossible for anyone to match his expectations for himself. ”In the kitchen, the first three weeks was the toughest period for the new boys. By the end of it they were usually fucked, having lost a stone in weight, gained a dazed expression and cried themselves dry. That was when the shaking started---and when many of them left. One day they were there, the next they were gone. If they could make it into the fourth week, they were doing well.”
[image]
You might recognize Gordon Ramsay, who worked for the temperamental White for almost three years before having enough of the tirades.
THE Mario Batali or as he was known in White’s kitchen Rusty Bollocks is one of those guys who worked for him. He was an especially favorite target for White because he was fat and nice. So you would think, now that Batali is one of the most famous chefs in the world, that he might want to skewer White for some of that rough treatment. Let’s check in and see what Batali says about him: “Marco is a gift to humanity, with more passion per pound than anyone else I have ever met. His story is genius, his voice his own….Marco is still my hero.”
WTH? Batali must be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. I would love to eat White’s food, but after reading about how he treats his workers, I’d rather scoop horse crap off the sidewalks of London than work for this guy. I’d rather be the chief bedding washer at a Moroccan whorehouse than work for this guy. I’d rather jack off a bull for semen collection than work for this guy. Whoa! Wait! I think I found the line in the sand...okay I’d rather work for him than do that.
He does become the youngest chef to ever win three Michelin stars, but each star is stained with the sweat, blood, and tears of anyone who ever labored for him. White worked for every great chef in Britain to learn as much as he could from them and then apply his own particular twist to their own greatness. He too was tortured by the system the same way he tortured his own staff, and like with the food, he put his own particular twist on that as well. He was on top of the world, untouchable. He had women slipping up to his private office for a quickie while their husbands waited patiently in the dining room for them to return from the “bathroom.” He threw diners out of his restaurant if they complained. If someone could not understand what he was all about, he did not have time for them.
[image]
Women were waiting in line to see The Devil in the Kitchen.
He even went into business with the toughest man in London, My-Cool Caine. Of course, they had a falling out as well, not surprising. You don’t mess around with Caine, and you don’t mess around with White. It was like putting two rocks in a blender.
White does mix in some tips on cooking that are more about seeing food differently. Seeing an egg for more than just an egg: ”Cook’s brain. It’s the ability to visualize the food on the plate, as a picture in the mind, and then work backward.”
”For instance, let’s just think for a moment about a fried egg. It’s not the most inspired dish, but then again, if you can’t cook an egg, what can you cook? And actually, a perfectly cooked fried egg is quite beautiful.”
I’m an eggoholic, so I was visualizing the clouds parting, and a ray of sunshine beaming down to turn the yolk to a yellow flame.
It really comes down to the fact that Marco Pierre White may not have been the easiest man to like, but many of the people who worked for him loved him. The tree of successful Chefs who learned from him and passed his knowledge onto another generation of chefs is wide and deep with numerous branches that can be found in just about any high-end restaurant in the world. He is still to this day the youngest chef to EVER win three Michelin stars. He was the grandson of a chef, the son of a chef, and his brothers were chefs, so the stove was his cradle. Sauces were his milk. He made music with skillets and ladles. He became the Mick Jagger of the kitchen.
”I took another bite, then sawed at the duck, and started getting pissed off.
‘Whoever did this,’ I said, ‘is a jackass.’
‘Yeah,’ Adam said. ‘This is pr”I took another bite, then sawed at the duck, and started getting pissed off.
‘Whoever did this,’ I said, ‘is a jackass.’
‘Yeah,’ Adam said. ‘This is pretty shameful. I can’t eat this.’ He pushed it away.
‘I agree,’ Lombardi said. ‘What would happen if you took it back to the kitchen and told them it sucked? Would they give you another entree or something? Isn’t that actually the responsible thing to do in this case? Shouldn’t they know how bad it is?’
….
‘And---damn---this duck once walked around. It was happy. It enjoyed itself. And look at it now. This creature truly died in vain. A pointless, useless death.’”
I’ve read a decent amount of spy novels in my reading lifetime, so every time the author Jonathan Dixon uses the acronym CIA, my mind instantly translates that as the Central Intelligence Agency. With the recent activity of the Bush Administration, the title Beaten, Seared and Sauced might also have been applied as a normal function of the CIA. Now that I’ve finished this book, and I think of the CIA as the Culinary Institute of America, the next American spy novel I read could be a bit tricky.
There are a couple of points in time, typically, when a young man or woman might feel the need to start applying themselves in a more productive direction. It could be when they are knocking on the door of thirty, or if they are particularly stubborn, it might take until they are approaching forty. Usually, these realizations come when they finally give up the last vestiges of their childhood and find that scraping by, while trying to figure out what they are supposed to do with the rest of their lives, is starting to be embarrassing rather than charming.
Jonathan Dixon is 38 years old when he makes the decision to attend the CIA. He wasn’t confused about the acronym. He really did want to learn to cook, not learn how to infiltrate terrorist organizations in the Middle East. When you are his age and doing an apprenticeship at a restaurant that normally is filled by twenty somethings…,”It’s more physically difficult to stand in one place, immobile, than to keep moving. My back bitched at me, and the bones of my feet murmured obscenities. But the orders started coming steadily at 8:00, first in small bursts announced by the ticket printer in staccato coughs, then in a quick steady stream.”
No rest for the wickedly OLD.
I would think that the first qualification for a student at CIA would be that they love food, but Dixon runs into students who don’t seem to like food at all. One eighteen year old guy will only eat hamburgers for every meal.
”’Do you want to try some of this?’ I pushed a plate at him that had foie gras mousse piped into profiteroles. It had been up for grabs on the buffet table when you walked in the cafeteria door. I was ecstatic when I figured out what it was….
‘No, man. That’s cool. I won’t like it.’
‘Really? How often are you gonna get this? Try it.’ I suddenly felt like my mother.
‘No. I just want the burger. I can’t wait until they teach us to cook these things.’”
Raising my kids, who are certainly not food explorers, and having to deal with their friends having even more reduced palates than my own kids, I’ve reached a point in my life where I refuse to dine with people under 30 unless they can answer a few questions first.
Will you eat… Mushrooms Onions Pasta Brussel sprouts ( Okay, I only use that one if they have already annoyed me.) If they haven’t annoyed me, I’ll ask if they eat green vegetables.
Life is too short to dine with people who truly are incapable of enjoying food.
So if the only food you personally desire is a hamburger, why would you want to be a chef? Simply baffling!
Jonathan Dixon frequently consults his Zuni Cafe Cookbook, which brings back some fond memories for me. When I lived in San Francisco and worked for Green Apple Books, my boss had a standing reservation at the Zuni Cafe. I was fortunate to be invited to dine there several times. This was the only time in my life where I’ve walked by this long line of people outside a restaurant waiting to eat and been whisked immediately to our table with vodka martinis miraculously appearing simultaneously with our arrival.
I like the fact that the teachers at the CIA are so intent on nothing being wasted. This is to help future employers of these students, because waste is lost revenue. Also, this philosophy reflects a respect for nature, whether it is an animal or a plant that gives up its life to become food. The teachers are not created equal, of course, and each one has his own style which is a reflection of his personality. One teacher in particular achieves that allusive combination of being tough and, yet, inspirational.
”’I’ve gotta say, that he is one of the best educators I’ve ever encountered. Hands down. It isn’t that you’re going to remember every single thing he said or be an expert at cutting up fish after seven days. But come on, didn’t you find yourself studying really hard?’
‘Shit, yeah.’
‘Okay, that’s the mark---that guy made you and me want to be like him. Not be him, but be like him---know as much you can, to be really good. We wanted to measure up. That’s being a really good teacher.’”
The best way to learn anything is through repetition, but given the scope of what needs to be covered in the short amount of time with each course, repetition is impossible. For instance, deboning a roast...Dixon butchers his poor roast in the one time he is allowed to try. It is not pretty.
On to the next thing.
An instructor shows him how to perfectly cube his potatoes, which is harder than it sounds. It involves standing at the right angle and holding your knife at the right angle. Dixon can’t go out and buy a bunch of roasts to practice deboning, but he can buy a 50 pound bag of potatoes and practice his cubing...outside of class.
I do have to applaud Jonathan for making the decision to go back to school and start a new career at 38. It is not easy. Money is a looming concern that adds stress to an already stressful school schedule. He makes some extra money freelance writing. At one point he takes a semester off from school to accept a writing project that will keep him afloat for a while longer. He does what he needs to do to keep his dream of graduating alive. I picked up this book remembering fondly reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, and nobody tells cooking stories like Bourdain, but the truthfulness and the accessibility of Dixon’s strife and ultimate triumph are...inspirational.
Loading...
