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161 of 174 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Provocative Read on Culinary Gossip and Issues. Buy It., May 19, 2006
`The Nasty Bits' by chef, novelist, and culinary bad boy TV and print journalist, Tony Bourdain is a collection of thirty-six (36) non-fiction pieces and one fictional fragment from various American and Australian English language culinary journals and other miscellaneous mags such as `Playboy' and `Rolling Stone'. The pieces are cleverly, if somewhat arbitrarily divided into six chapters, titled by the five flavors on the tongue, Salty, Sweet, Sour, Bitter, and Unami, plus `A Taste of Fiction'.
Many of the pieces are an update to the subjects Tony covers in his best known book, the memoir, `Kitchen Confidential', plus commentaries on his adventures while doing various TV shows and personal appearances since he hung up his toque as executive chef of Les Halles in New York City a few years ago. I am happy to say that while I was never very impressed by the few Bourdain pieces I read in `Gourmet', almost all of these pieces have something interesting to say to the lover of culinary gossip.
Bourdain is almost unique among the current crop of culinary celebrities. I have often seen it written that he is a better writer than he was a chef. In my reading, I think this is quite true, since I find his pieces as engaging as the very spicy memoir from Gael Greene and `almost' as literate as the writing of the great M. F. K. Fisher. His one cookbook of recipes from Les Halles is worth reading more for the way Bourdain writes about his very simple recipes than for the recipes themselves.
Bourdain's primary interest is as an iconoclast and as a guide to the dirty underbelly of the culinary world. It is no surprise that he quotes as one of his primary inspirations, a passage from George Orwell's `Down and Out in Paris and London' where we see the all the filth and acrimony behind the swinging doors in the kitchens of some very famous restaurants. Bourdain is famous, for example, of dissing the current icon, Emeril Lagasse. He also belittles England's golden boy, Jamie Oliver and even takes on the reputation of the American culinary godhead, James Beard.
My initial reaction to this debunking is to remember the comment that to a butler, the master of the house is always a smaller figure than he cuts in public, because he is only being seen from a butler's point of view. For example, I find Jamie Oliver's contribution to the culinary world to be far greater than the simple body of his recipes. Oliver is pushing the culinary envelope, much the same way as Bourdain, but in an entirely different direction. But then, I read Bourdain describe what he finds interesting and valuable about Oliver and fellow Brit, Nigella Lawson, and I discover that this is exactly what I respect about these and the other major Brit food writers, Nigel Slater and Tasmania Day-Lewis. They seem to capture the `joie-de-vivre' of everyday food in a more genuine way than our favorite American culinary cheerleaders such as Rachael Ray and Paula Deen.
So, while Bourdain's primary currency is strong opinions, I believe he is never so married to an opinion that he does not change his mind now and again. Bourdain is at his very best when he gives us his observations and opinions on life behind the swinging doors on the line at American restaurants and when he reveals that many modern culinary dogmas are as much a political position as they are a reflection of restaurant realities.
One of Bourdain's most interesting topics is the doctrine of cooking by `terroir' celebrated by many today, especially Alice Waters, based on the writings of Richard Olney. The antithesis of `terroir' is `fusion' cuisine where dishes are made up of ingredients from widely different locations around the world. The fact is that today's global produce distribution system is starting to make seasonal cooking from local ingredients look just a bit silly for all but the very well connected venues such as Chez Panisse and The French Laundry. Another glaring hole in the doctrine of using only the freshest ingredients is the fact that in order to survive, restaurant chefs will work with just about anything that is edible to make ends meet and fill in for depleted stores. This confirms the suspicion I had about the `local and fresh' dogma when I read in Jacques Pepin's `The Apprentice' about how his mother would buy all the market leftovers at the end of the day at reduced prices to keep her restaurant kitchen stocked.
Another of Bourdain's common topics, so appropriate to today's headlines, is the fact that so many of the line cooks in America's major restaurants are illegal immigrants from Mexico and places south. The ironies with this subject abound in that while white Anglo graduates of American culinary schools are flooding the market, they tend to be unwilling to dedicate the years as a prep chef to earn the chops to excel in a smoothly running culinary team. The Hispanics who do this work, on the other hand, could not afford to eat in the restaurants they serve and they are totally absent from galas held at the James Beard house.
So, Bourdain's writing is interesting more for his strong opinions about things commonly hidden behind the scenes, while maintaining a reasonably open mind about these opinions. He is probably not always right, since it is obvious that he indulges in exaggeration now and again (such as, I suspect, when he describes a very disheveled colleague, Michael Ruhlman in a dirty T-shirt in a Las Vegas casino). But, he is always entertaining and thought provoking.
Excellent read for culinary gossip junkies and foodies in general.
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55 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Art-food Dismissed. Bourdain is HUNGRY., June 1, 2006
Art-cuisine one-upsmanship is incresingly out of hand. Showcase restaurants are more and more divorced from the roots of good eating: the economical, parsimonious, and HUNGRY tradition of farm, field, and woods. When Anthony Bourdain writes, whether it be about commercial kitchens, or Bistro food, or artsy platings, or variety meats, or his adventures to the culinary hinterlands, he is always criticizing one thing: the sissifying of food [and chefs] in the art-cuisine market. He disdains the fussy, the hyper-refined, and the decorative. His criticisms in Nasty Bits are just as spot-on damning and funny as we've come to expect after reading Kitchen Confidential and The Les Halles Cookbook. He enthusiastically celebrates the simple pleasures of skillfully-prepared simple dishes, returning time and again to our hunger and our need for sustenance and flavor.
In Nasty Bits he travels the world in search of intense and intimate food adventures. He eats seal with an Inuit family, and his description is alive to the newness and immediacy of the experience. But these world travels do not, by any means, lead to an embrace of 'fusion' cuisine with all of its forced assimilations and jarring collisions. He is a food realist: he operates within the larger economy, as nearly all of us do, but with a real regard for the basic dishes that evolved out of specific places before refrigeration and multinationals. Without indulging in specious pseudo-intellectual arguments, pro or con, as so many food writers-cum-cultural critics do, he references appetite and taste. These are certainly the first and second reasons we eat.
What he disparages so eloquently are all the OTHER reasons we eat: to impress, to be seen, to scratch the itch of dilettantism, to celebrate our wealth, etc. He practices a robust, forthright, honest culinary craft in which ingredients are embraced for their sensual properties, their ability to satisfy, and even their ability to restore an effete appetite to its rightful place at the groaning board. This practice in no way rejects subtlety. In fact, his pleasure in seasonings and perfect doneness is a constant theme in his cookbook and in his accounts of adventure-eating. But he practices a CRAFT, which is not the same as ART. This approach recalls Jacques Pepin's humble and beautiful assertion that he is a technician, not an artist. The distinction is, I think, crucial: art-cooking comes out of the culinary schools and the old French hotel-kitchen traditions, while the craft Bourdain admires comes out of the tradition of farming, hunting, and foraging. His tastes run to the honest and robust. That said, he's also captivated by the chemical-whimsical innovations of Ferran Adria.
We have the luxury of choosing, of course. But it would be disingenuous to state that our choices are independent of our cultural values. Where art-cuisine celebrates the convenience and mobility of the modern world, the farmhouse tradition celebrates the settled, local traditions that often achieved a narrow perfection. As Wendell Berry pointed out, it is the settled, local traditions that have become the radical choice. They criticize and subvert the global markets, just as Bourdain criticizes and subverts our culture of fussiness and trepidation.
This is a great read.
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28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Funny Collection, May 18, 2006
What do you get when an author who feels like a character out of Spinal Tap and makes an earnest attempt at food porn? Has to be Anthony Bourdain. This is a funny collection of both published and unpublished material Bourdain has done over the few years since the publication of his much talked about book Kitchen Confidential.It is rude, irreverent and honest and will make you wish he didn't wait so damn long to publish again. Be warned though if you take offense easily at vulgarity, don't have a sense of humor or adventure this is not a good book to start with or maybe read at all. Those who are familiar with Chef Bourdain's style of writing and have seen his show No Reservations on the Travel Channel will no doubt enjoy this collection.
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