Posted on Wed, Jun. 21, 2006
By Carolyn Jung
Mercury News
It's not every day I dine with someone who has noshed on iguana tamales in Oaxaca, swallowed the beating heart of a cobra in Vietnam, and feasted on raw, bloody seal innards and eyeballs with an Inuit family in the northern reaches of Canada.
But then, Anthony Bourdain is not your typical lunch date.
The baddest of the culinary bad boys, this chef-turned-bestselling-author-turned-TV-star is like the coolest guy in high school, who smoked too much, cussed too much, got high too much and had the last laugh.
With swagger and irreverence, along with a good dose of snarky charm, he shot to stardom six years ago with the mega success of ``Kitchen Confidential'' (Bloomsbury) his memoir of the sordid adventures and questionable characters encountered in his nearly three decades of cooking.
He may be the executive chef of Les Halles in New York, but don't go looking for him there. These days, he's on the road 10 months of the year. Last week, he was in the Bay Area to promote his new book, ``The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones'' (Bloomsbury USA), a collection of new and previously published essays written as only Bourdain can.
The soon-to-be 50-year-old traverses the globe in search of fascinating culture and cuisine on his hit show on the Travel Channel, ``Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations.'' Last week, he dished on vegetarians, foie gras bans and the Food Network's perky Rachael Ray -- all over Basque food at Piperade restaurant in San Francisco (where he did indeed have a reservation).
Q How do you stay so skinny?
A I'm a chain-smoker. I have a cigarette and coffee for breakfast, and I don't snack. I stick to meat, cheese and cigarettes. [At Piperade, it was piquillo peppers stuffed with goat cheese, followed by braised veal cheeks, then a smoke on the patio.]
Q Before ``Kitchen Confidential,'' you didn't own a credit card?
A No credit card, no health insurance, I hadn't paid taxes in years, I never paid rent on time, and I lived paycheck to paycheck.
Q How has life changed?
A A few years ago, I was standing behind a stove doing 350 dinners a night. A few days ago, I was flying over Ghana in a helicopter, with the theme from ``Apocalypse Now'' blaring. Everything changed. I don't really live anywhere now. I'm unable to stay still now. But I'm living a dream. I have a lot of pinch-me moments. Yet you do pay a price when your dream comes true, and so do the people around you.
Q What's the price you paid?
A My marriage.
Q What did you think of the short-lived TV series based on ``Kitchen Confidential''?
A Given the format, they did pretty well. The characters were unrepentant, unlikable. I didn't suffer at the hands of Hollywood. I'm not heartbroken that it's not around, and I wasn't embarrassed when it was.
Q At one point, wasn't the book being talked about as a feature film starring Brad Pitt?
A Yeah, Brad Pitt. I learned long ago that means maybe [``Bay Watch'' star David] Hasselhoff's brother.
Q Where haven't you been yet that you're dying to visit?
A I'd like to go to China to see the rest of it. I'd like to go back to Vietnam, and to Madagascar, Prague and northern Italy. We have an episode planned where I'll go to northern Italy with [New York chef] Mario Batali.
Q What's the one place you never tire of?
A Vietnam. It's pheromonal. I just fell in love there -- the smells, and the people are so proud of their country, of their family, of their food.
Q What place surprised you the most?
A Peru. I was surprised at how good the food is. And Indonesia. I knew the food would be great, but I didn't know how great. I had the best roast pig there -- on a spit, basted with coconut water.
Q How often do you get ill on the road?
A My crew and I have a pool about who'll get sick each week. It's always a camera person or the assistant producer -- and it's always the hotel buffet. In France, when I was doing the show, ``A Cook's Tour,'' I got violently ill. But not since then. I eat what the locals eat, in places that are busy.
Q Are you ever at your bistro, Les Halles?
A Maybe once a month, for special events or interviews. I miss my crew, but I don't miss standing on my feet 14 hours a day. At 50, it starts to hurt and you're not getting any better or faster, no matter what anyone else says.
Q Do you ever cook anymore?
A Once in a great while at home. But really, if I leave any food in the refrigerator, it's a science experiment. And after two weeks in the jungle, when I'm back in New York I just want to call out for pizza.
Q Favorite foods?
A If I sign a big book deal, I'll take myself out for some really good sushi. I love soulful, pretense-free ethnic cooking. I love what Fergus Henderson does at St. John in London [which specializes in offal]. It's my favorite restaurant in the world. And I love Asian chile dishes. I've grown so fond of them that they make a lot of Western food seem bland to me now.
Q What would your last meal be?
A Fergus' roast bone marrow with parsley salad. It's a pure, luxurious, but undemanding food experience, a simply good thing.
Q Where do you eat when you're in San Francisco?
A Swan Oyster Depot. Red's Java House. And Aqua -- chef Laurent Manrique is a good friend. I have to pay respect; it's like being in the Mafia.
Q Anything you won't eat?
A Rat. No matter how good people say it is. And I'm very glad I've managed to avoid cat or dog.
Q What do you think of so-called ``molecular gastronomy,'' where chefs use science to craft food into foams, gels, ``paper'' and other oddities?
A I hated the notion in principle until I ate at El Bulli in Spain. Sometimes it's really great to be wrong about things. As practiced by Ferran Adria there, it's confusing, provocative, but unbelievably good.
Q Your thoughts on the recent bans against foie gras?
A I see the future, and it doesn't include foie gras. They shrewdly picked the right issue with a small constituency in America. I'm unhappy about it, I'm angry about it. The thought that someone could be worried about that or about lobsters in tanks when you see what's going on in Darfur . . . I'd like to see the courage of their convictions. I'd like to see them go into the inner city of Oakland or Mexico or Brazil and stop a dog fight.
Q Do you like the direction food is going in this country?
A In apocalyptic terms, it's a constant struggle between good and evil, with the hope that there are a few more of us good guys than there are of them. I like a lot of the direction. The Slow Food movement is a very positive one. Organics, artisanal cheeses, making things the old way -- that can only be good.
I'd like to see Mexicans break the glass ceiling and get their name on the menu of French, Italian or American restaurants. It's about time. And I think we shouldn't legislate fast-food. Children should just be shamed, bullied by their schoolmates into not eating it. If McDonald's targets kids, why shouldn't the good guys do some viral campaign to convince kids it's not cool to eat this stuff?
Q One of my favorite shows remains the episode of ``A Cook's Tour,'' in which you ate at the French Laundry for the first time -- four hours, 25-plus courses with your posse of author Michael Ruhlman, and New York chefs Eric Ripert and Scott Bryant.
A It's still the best white-tablecloth meal I've had. One thing I'm really proud of is that Thomas Keller and his staff really liked the show. I wanted to get it right. It's like with ``Kitchen Confidential,'' I didn't want cooks and chefs to read it and say ``That's B.S.'' I've heard from lots of chefs that it's the first book they've read in English or the first book they've read since high school.
Q So what's the first thing that pops into your head when I say the following: Thomas Keller?
A The walking Buddha. My hero. I get the vapors when I'm around him.
Q Ferran Adria?
A The Jimi Hendrix of cooking.
Q Vegetarians?
A Joyless, angry, frightened, anti-human, and just plain rude. How can you travel and be a vegetarian? I don't like my grandma's cooking, but at least I try it.
Q The French?
A Victims of their own pre-eminence. But mothers to us all. It's still soul food to me.
Q Amuse bouches?
A I think I've had enough amuses. I'm not amused anymore.
Q No-smoking laws in restaurants?
A You can't smoke in a pub in Belfast or Sicily now. That's all you need to know about the way the world is going. I'll stand out in the cold and smoke until I drop. All the cool people are outside anyway. In New York, there are people who actually pretend to smoke, because that's where all the cool women are.
Q People who order steaks well done?
A I feel sorry for them. Clearly, they don't want food.
Q Rachael Ray?
A A bad tipper. Come on -- ``$40 a Day''? I find her relentless good cheer terrifying and distrust anyone who could stand in front of a camera and eat mediocre food and say it's good. Be honest and say it sucks.
Q The one thing nobody knows about you is . . . ?
A I'm very good with charcoal, with still life and cartooning. I like cats. I agree with PETA on the wearing of fur and about animal testing of cosmetics, but that's about it. I like and respect a good waiter. I have been known to watch MTV's ``My Super Sweet 16.'' It's evil, it's horrible, it's nasty girls, but I can't take my eyes off of it.
Q Favorite junk food you're ashamed of loving?
A Mac 'n' cheese at KFC. It's so disgusting. I don't know if there's even real cheese in it.
Q In ``Anthony Bourdain -- the Movie,'' you would be played by . . . ?
A Gary Oldman.
Q And you would cook like . . . ?
A Fergus Henderson.
And if I could come back as anyone else, it would be as the bass player for Curtis Mayfield.
Q Lastly, do you want your legacy to be as a chef or a writer?
A As a lucky cook -- who turned out not to be such a bad bastard after all
By Carolyn Jung
Mercury News
It's not every day I dine with someone who has noshed on iguana tamales in Oaxaca, swallowed the beating heart of a cobra in Vietnam, and feasted on raw, bloody seal innards and eyeballs with an Inuit family in the northern reaches of Canada.
But then, Anthony Bourdain is not your typical lunch date.
The baddest of the culinary bad boys, this chef-turned-bestselling-author-turned-TV-star is like the coolest guy in high school, who smoked too much, cussed too much, got high too much and had the last laugh.
With swagger and irreverence, along with a good dose of snarky charm, he shot to stardom six years ago with the mega success of ``Kitchen Confidential'' (Bloomsbury) his memoir of the sordid adventures and questionable characters encountered in his nearly three decades of cooking.
He may be the executive chef of Les Halles in New York, but don't go looking for him there. These days, he's on the road 10 months of the year. Last week, he was in the Bay Area to promote his new book, ``The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones'' (Bloomsbury USA), a collection of new and previously published essays written as only Bourdain can.
The soon-to-be 50-year-old traverses the globe in search of fascinating culture and cuisine on his hit show on the Travel Channel, ``Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations.'' Last week, he dished on vegetarians, foie gras bans and the Food Network's perky Rachael Ray -- all over Basque food at Piperade restaurant in San Francisco (where he did indeed have a reservation).
Q How do you stay so skinny?
A I'm a chain-smoker. I have a cigarette and coffee for breakfast, and I don't snack. I stick to meat, cheese and cigarettes. [At Piperade, it was piquillo peppers stuffed with goat cheese, followed by braised veal cheeks, then a smoke on the patio.]
Q Before ``Kitchen Confidential,'' you didn't own a credit card?
A No credit card, no health insurance, I hadn't paid taxes in years, I never paid rent on time, and I lived paycheck to paycheck.
Q How has life changed?
A A few years ago, I was standing behind a stove doing 350 dinners a night. A few days ago, I was flying over Ghana in a helicopter, with the theme from ``Apocalypse Now'' blaring. Everything changed. I don't really live anywhere now. I'm unable to stay still now. But I'm living a dream. I have a lot of pinch-me moments. Yet you do pay a price when your dream comes true, and so do the people around you.
Q What's the price you paid?
A My marriage.
Q What did you think of the short-lived TV series based on ``Kitchen Confidential''?
A Given the format, they did pretty well. The characters were unrepentant, unlikable. I didn't suffer at the hands of Hollywood. I'm not heartbroken that it's not around, and I wasn't embarrassed when it was.
Q At one point, wasn't the book being talked about as a feature film starring Brad Pitt?
A Yeah, Brad Pitt. I learned long ago that means maybe [``Bay Watch'' star David] Hasselhoff's brother.
Q Where haven't you been yet that you're dying to visit?
A I'd like to go to China to see the rest of it. I'd like to go back to Vietnam, and to Madagascar, Prague and northern Italy. We have an episode planned where I'll go to northern Italy with [New York chef] Mario Batali.
Q What's the one place you never tire of?
A Vietnam. It's pheromonal. I just fell in love there -- the smells, and the people are so proud of their country, of their family, of their food.
Q What place surprised you the most?
A Peru. I was surprised at how good the food is. And Indonesia. I knew the food would be great, but I didn't know how great. I had the best roast pig there -- on a spit, basted with coconut water.
Q How often do you get ill on the road?
A My crew and I have a pool about who'll get sick each week. It's always a camera person or the assistant producer -- and it's always the hotel buffet. In France, when I was doing the show, ``A Cook's Tour,'' I got violently ill. But not since then. I eat what the locals eat, in places that are busy.
Q Are you ever at your bistro, Les Halles?
A Maybe once a month, for special events or interviews. I miss my crew, but I don't miss standing on my feet 14 hours a day. At 50, it starts to hurt and you're not getting any better or faster, no matter what anyone else says.
Q Do you ever cook anymore?
A Once in a great while at home. But really, if I leave any food in the refrigerator, it's a science experiment. And after two weeks in the jungle, when I'm back in New York I just want to call out for pizza.
Q Favorite foods?
A If I sign a big book deal, I'll take myself out for some really good sushi. I love soulful, pretense-free ethnic cooking. I love what Fergus Henderson does at St. John in London [which specializes in offal]. It's my favorite restaurant in the world. And I love Asian chile dishes. I've grown so fond of them that they make a lot of Western food seem bland to me now.
Q What would your last meal be?
A Fergus' roast bone marrow with parsley salad. It's a pure, luxurious, but undemanding food experience, a simply good thing.
Q Where do you eat when you're in San Francisco?
A Swan Oyster Depot. Red's Java House. And Aqua -- chef Laurent Manrique is a good friend. I have to pay respect; it's like being in the Mafia.
Q Anything you won't eat?
A Rat. No matter how good people say it is. And I'm very glad I've managed to avoid cat or dog.
Q What do you think of so-called ``molecular gastronomy,'' where chefs use science to craft food into foams, gels, ``paper'' and other oddities?
A I hated the notion in principle until I ate at El Bulli in Spain. Sometimes it's really great to be wrong about things. As practiced by Ferran Adria there, it's confusing, provocative, but unbelievably good.
Q Your thoughts on the recent bans against foie gras?
A I see the future, and it doesn't include foie gras. They shrewdly picked the right issue with a small constituency in America. I'm unhappy about it, I'm angry about it. The thought that someone could be worried about that or about lobsters in tanks when you see what's going on in Darfur . . . I'd like to see the courage of their convictions. I'd like to see them go into the inner city of Oakland or Mexico or Brazil and stop a dog fight.
Q Do you like the direction food is going in this country?
A In apocalyptic terms, it's a constant struggle between good and evil, with the hope that there are a few more of us good guys than there are of them. I like a lot of the direction. The Slow Food movement is a very positive one. Organics, artisanal cheeses, making things the old way -- that can only be good.
I'd like to see Mexicans break the glass ceiling and get their name on the menu of French, Italian or American restaurants. It's about time. And I think we shouldn't legislate fast-food. Children should just be shamed, bullied by their schoolmates into not eating it. If McDonald's targets kids, why shouldn't the good guys do some viral campaign to convince kids it's not cool to eat this stuff?
Q One of my favorite shows remains the episode of ``A Cook's Tour,'' in which you ate at the French Laundry for the first time -- four hours, 25-plus courses with your posse of author Michael Ruhlman, and New York chefs Eric Ripert and Scott Bryant.
A It's still the best white-tablecloth meal I've had. One thing I'm really proud of is that Thomas Keller and his staff really liked the show. I wanted to get it right. It's like with ``Kitchen Confidential,'' I didn't want cooks and chefs to read it and say ``That's B.S.'' I've heard from lots of chefs that it's the first book they've read in English or the first book they've read since high school.
Q So what's the first thing that pops into your head when I say the following: Thomas Keller?
A The walking Buddha. My hero. I get the vapors when I'm around him.
Q Ferran Adria?
A The Jimi Hendrix of cooking.
Q Vegetarians?
A Joyless, angry, frightened, anti-human, and just plain rude. How can you travel and be a vegetarian? I don't like my grandma's cooking, but at least I try it.
Q The French?
A Victims of their own pre-eminence. But mothers to us all. It's still soul food to me.
Q Amuse bouches?
A I think I've had enough amuses. I'm not amused anymore.
Q No-smoking laws in restaurants?
A You can't smoke in a pub in Belfast or Sicily now. That's all you need to know about the way the world is going. I'll stand out in the cold and smoke until I drop. All the cool people are outside anyway. In New York, there are people who actually pretend to smoke, because that's where all the cool women are.
Q People who order steaks well done?
A I feel sorry for them. Clearly, they don't want food.
Q Rachael Ray?
A A bad tipper. Come on -- ``$40 a Day''? I find her relentless good cheer terrifying and distrust anyone who could stand in front of a camera and eat mediocre food and say it's good. Be honest and say it sucks.
Q The one thing nobody knows about you is . . . ?
A I'm very good with charcoal, with still life and cartooning. I like cats. I agree with PETA on the wearing of fur and about animal testing of cosmetics, but that's about it. I like and respect a good waiter. I have been known to watch MTV's ``My Super Sweet 16.'' It's evil, it's horrible, it's nasty girls, but I can't take my eyes off of it.
Q Favorite junk food you're ashamed of loving?
A Mac 'n' cheese at KFC. It's so disgusting. I don't know if there's even real cheese in it.
Q In ``Anthony Bourdain -- the Movie,'' you would be played by . . . ?
A Gary Oldman.
Q And you would cook like . . . ?
A Fergus Henderson.
And if I could come back as anyone else, it would be as the bass player for Curtis Mayfield.
Q Lastly, do you want your legacy to be as a chef or a writer?
A As a lucky cook -- who turned out not to be such a bad bastard after all
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