Image by Tracy Hunter
Among the acquired tastes I’ve picked up over the years, I rank Anthony Bourdain as one of the more odd. His acidic wit is fantastic, I suppose, as long as you don’t find yourself in the crosshairs of it. He worked in the ugly underbelly of the cooking world and lived to tell the tale. He is a fantastic raconteur. But at times, I find him down right annoying, the default enfant terrible from central casting, a caustic garnish on a strangely crafted dish, no longer a working chef, whipped out as a judge on Top Chef and the like, his long, grizzled and terrifying shadow descending like a funereal pall on doe-eyed cooking show contestants.
But there are times when the man is simply brilliant. Michael Ruhlman is featuring a must read excerpt from Bourdain’s new book. It is a great piece. If you have ever entertained the notion of going to cooking school, you must read this piece. And then you must go buy his book
People often ask me about going to cooking school. For me, it is one of the greatest things I’ve ever done in my life. Loved it. And I expect this is what many want to hear. But this is not what I tell them. I try to scare them, as the profession has been glamorized out of proportion.
I went to cooking school at the ripe age of 41 and graduated high in my class. Cooking school is not professional cooking; they are two different beasts and the demands of the profession are not to be believed. You work insanely long work shifts for very low hourly rates. You end up keeping vampire hours, the sun a strange, burning bright orb that you see for small periods of time. As Bourdain says:
As chefs know (literally) in their bones (and joints), half the job for the first few years—if not the entirety of your career—involves running up and down stairs (quickly), carrying bus pans loaded with food, and making hundreds of deep-knee bends a night into low-boy refrigerators. In conditions of excruciatingly high heat and humidity of a kind that can cause young and superbly fit cooks to falter.
I’ve never regretted going to cooking school nor the cooking jobs that I had. But if this madness appeals to you, do read Bourdain and take what he says to heart, so that if you do want to pursue the life of a cook, you approach it with open eyes. And then buy his dinner for him if you ever run into him, as you will be in his debt.
PS: Also read Daniel Boulud’s Letters to a Young Chef (Art of Mentoring)