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The Performance Enhanced KitchenExcerpts in the New Yorker, critical acclaim from the major reviewers, AnthonyBourdains’ book Kitchen Confidential has even been touted as the new ‘Down andOut in London and Paris’ by Newsweek.The title is from the 1958 Jack Arnold directed cult movie classic High SchoolConfidential. You remember the one with Mamie Van Doren in that sweater, RussTamblyn as the cool nark posing as a hepcat, Jackie Coogan [uncle Fester] as the evil pusher and Jerry Lee Lewis as himself. Occasionally featuring as a late night doublewith Reefer Madness for the stoned lounge lizard set. A film so ridiculous that nobodytook it seriously. Well, here we go again. This one is bound to be optioned.Bourdain’s book hit the stands in Australia during the Sydney Olympics, a time whenwe all got an education in performance enhancing substance abuse.Not a bad briefing for this entertaining but equally ridiculous, purportedly true biography.The wild card in this very neat and well-written tale is heroin.Bourdain’s book takes us into the “culinary underbelly” of the New York restaurantscene, through the stoned eyes of the author. A Vassar dropout turned line cook. Aself-made bad boy, desperately trying to be a working class hero amongst the hardmen of the kitchen.It’s all very ‘cool’ but for the assumption that this is how it is, and its OK.We get a good lesson in New York ‘kitchenspeak’ but there is something going off inhis ‘mis en place’ or ‘meez’ as he calls the preparations for ‘service’. Something isfishy.A trip to France with his parents in the sixties introduces the young boy to the joys of French food. While his folks dine at the legendary ‘Pyramide’ of M. Fernand Point atVienne little Anthony and his brother are left in the car.A few days later comes the first epiphany, eating a freshly opened oyster that his parents, who after making the pilgrimage to Point, refuse to try.Really? If you think Point is ‘worth a detour’ do you not eat a freshly shuckedoyster?But its all true our author keeps telling us.Kitchen ‘lifers’ as he calls those who choose to cook for a living will start to recognisethe cracks in the pastry.There are clever and beguiling insights into the workings of what is known in thetrade as a ‘cowboy kitchen’, but the danger is that the outsider will just confirm hisalready hyped up image of kitchen culture.
 
We have been shown cooks to be drugged up, drunken, unstable, ego driven,megalomaniacs.It is easy to just accept this image, continue to build up the glamour, mythologise the public image of a working craftsman, and then wonder in amazement why they behave so badly.Not a lot is written about the suicide rates and overdoses within the hospitalityindustry. National statistics are hard to find, but in Melbourne at least seven cooks died fromintravenous drug overdoses between January and September last year according to theCoroners Court.Inside the industry the picture is much sadder.Soon after reading the book, I was called back to my old ‘Alma Mater’ for a spot of temping. On a sunny day after a fine lunch service, I found myself chewing the fatand having a smoke on the street during our break with my kitchen crew.When a young lady, a friend of the second chef came up and told him that his mate, ayoung man who had been a kitchen-hand in the hotel had killed himself early in theweek.The looks on their faces took me back to a late night telephone call fifteen years agothat told me I had lost my good friend and fellow cook to the pressures of our industry.Since that day I have seen many of my colleagues stumble, and some fall over. Thisis why a seductive, saucy tale such as this has to be put into perspective.The ‘superstar cooks’ of the nineties ‘Brit Pack’ like Marco Pierre White and GordonRamsay have, in my opinion also hijacked the attention of food world with the sameassumption that all is permissible for the sake of a perfect plate.Bullying, permanent rosters of sixteen-hour days, contempt for the needs of dinershave become entrenched into the culture of the “chef as hero” kitchen.Young cooks like Bourdain develop a kind of blind worship for their ‘chef’. And later as they assume ‘command’ they elicit the same from their staff.The numbers take over. How many did you do last night?Macho endurance marathons, boys own sex fantasies combined with a few well-chosen icons of popular food trends show how isolated Bourdain’s kitchens are fromthe real enjoyment of food in a restaurant. And also, to the joys of cooking professionally and under pressure. He calls himself ‘a classically trained chef’ after 4 years at the Culinary Institute of America but choses to adopt only the rhetoric of the brigade.In his kitchens a ‘war’ between the front of house and the kitchen rages. Spies areemployed to keep the ‘chef’ briefed as to the politics of the shop. His ‘owners, areeither stupid or cunning. Yawn.
 
The old adage ‘if you can’t stand the heat’ is no longer the excuse behind which abusecan hide.Bourdain gets his taste of terror from the ‘soufflé nazi’ at the CIA [Culinary Instituteof America].While working the desert section in the student restaurant he watches his fellowstudents humiliated but our Rambo is not fazed. In the end Bourdain respects the bully for his culinary work ignoring the damage done to another group of youngcooks.My experience with head chefs that like to dish out a bit of public humiliation is thatthey learned the techniques from their masters.If we examine the origins of the classical kitchen hierarchy of ‘comis’, ‘chef de partie’, ‘sous chef and such, history will show us that it is from this extreme classstructure that the bullying of apprentices by tyrannical chefs have emerged.There is a different way. And I am proud to say a way being practised by more andmore younger cooks who now control some very influential kitchens.Many kitchens have also done away with the one dimensional fish-grill-veg-sauce brigade utilising modern cooking equipment to create non-linear solutions to the sametasks that simply are, feeding a lot of people reasonably quickly.The new electronic technology has dramatically changed the way a restaurantoperates. Computerised ordering systems combined with very large dining roomshave accelerated the speed at which orders hit the kitchen. With a few exceptionsmost kitchens still rely on old kitchen- staff to waiter ratios that make for an artificial but very profitable frenetic rush at peak periods.This is sadly where the wild card comes into its’ speedy play.The big fib in this book is the way that Bourdain choses to ignore the way that illicitsubstances have become part of the ‘meez’. Choosing instead to glamorise therecreational aspect.There is practice of performance enhancing drug use in many kitchens. Where as 10or 20 years ago it was booze and pot, today we may see the day start with a highoctane ‘sports drink’, lots of ristrettos, a couple of pseudo-ephedrine pills beforeservice and the very casual use of amphetamines. Just to keep up the pace.And sadly heroin and cocaine are also too easy to obtain. We can laugh at Uma Thurmann overdosing in Pulp Fiction in the same way we canaccept Bourdains confessions and turn them into cult classics, but this is where itstops being fiction.
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