One of the truly great things about working in restaurants is that, once you've been there long enough, you will eventually come into work with a crippling hangover. If you are lucky, one of the Latino cooks will recognize your weakened state. He will understand that you are ill and desperate and will probably do anything to alleviate your pain. He will offer you his never-fail hangover cure. Reluctant to turn down any gesture of kindness, you will find yourself shamed into eating some pig-organ wrapped in a corn tortilla that was clearly never meant to be consumed by a milk-fed gringo. This pig organ will be so singulary putrid in taste and texture that you will probably not notice (untill a few minutes later) that it is so alarmingly HOT and all-permeating that even the sweat rolling in huge sheets down your face burns your eyes like acid.

Once you are through vomiting, and the deafening laughter from the back-of-the-house has ceased, you will be so grateful for having survived the Poison Tripe Taco, that any vague hangover-discomfort will have immediately diminished.

I really do like my job sometimes.

FMajcinek wrote:One of the truly great things about working in restaurants is that, once you've been there long enough, you will eventually come into work with a crippling hangover. If you are lucky, one of the Latino cooks will recognize your weakened state. He will understand that you are ill and desperate and will probably do anything to alleviate your pain. He will offer you his never-fail hangover cure. Reluctant to turn down any gesture of kindness, you will find yourself shamed into eating some pig-organ wrapped in a corn tortilla that was clearly never meant to be consumed by a milk-fed gringo. This pig organ will be so singulary putrid in taste and texture that you will probably not notice (untill a few minutes later) that it is so alarmingly HOT and all-permeating that even the sweat rolling in huge sheets down your face burns your eyes like acid.

Once you are through vomiting, and the deafening laughter from the back-of-the-house has ceased, you will be so grateful for having survived the Poison Tripe Taco, that any vague hangover-discomfort will have immediately diminished.

I really do like my job sometimes.

That happened to me more than once while working in Florida.

not crap. both kitchen confidential & a cook's tour are great... his fiction is ehh... his persona seems genuine & i'm quite envious of the traveling/cooking/eating.

hench wrote:not crap. both kitchen confidential & a cook's tour are great... his fiction is ehh... his persona seems genuine & i'm quite envious of the traveling/cooking/eating.

Fiction?

Fiction?

Why'd you have to tell me about his fiction?

tmidgett wrote:Fiction?

Fiction?

Why'd you have to tell me about his fiction?

there's only 3 or 4 of them:
http://www.anthonybourdain.com/copy.asp?g=4&id=3


and they're not bad - just not as stellar as his nonfiction. i'm pretty sure that h.wash library has all of them...

hench wrote:

tmidgett wrote:Why'd you have to tell me about his fiction?

and they're not bad - just not as stellar as his nonfiction.

Agreed. The library is a good suggestion.

The proper RANK! is:
1) Bourdain's non-fiction.
2) Bourdain's TV shows.
3) Bourdain's fiction.

The novels are just basic crime novels with lots of food and mafia elements. Fun to pass the time with, but won't change your life. Oh, but his "historical novel" about Typhoid Mary was worth it. He writes it from a cook's perspective. Interesting read.

In the past week I watched this guy:

1. Eat a guinea pig
2. Eat raw seal

And make it look delicious...

Not crap.

Chapter Two wrote:But I approve of good nutrition for schoolchildren.

Jamie Oliver is pretty awesome for doing that. I only saw him on 60 minutes (I haven't watched his naked chef show) the other day, but even if he is a bastard, going out of his way to provide non-shitty food for kids is pretty cool. And his restaraunt providing jobs to troubled youth makes me respect the guy.

I am typing this from Italy, where I have discovered a new favorite salume: smoked, cured horsemeat bresaola. It is by far the best cured meat I have ever had. I have had horse four or five times before this, but this is the only preparation that was better than its conventional butchery counterparts. The raw horse cheeks I had in Japan were okay, but not better than a nice carpaccio. This bresaola -- like solidified campfire smoke, with aftertastes as complex as good booze or wine, with a texture between butter and leather. Incredible.

Later today I will be having crostini di lardo (cured pig neck fat on toast). I love lardo.

I have an adventurous palate, and I admire Anthony Bourdain as a sort of figurehead of this mentality. I will eat (on recommendation) anything that doesn't make me physically ill, and it is impressive to me that Mr. Bourdain does not even respect that modest limitation. Snake bile coctail anyone? Rotted shark?

Although I cannot eat fish due to allergy, I have eaten every part of every other animal ever offered to me -- mammal, reptile, guts, skin, blood, gristle, sex organs, whatever. None of it has ever had a bad effect other than being at worst unremarkable. There is one food that lingers in my memory as one of the worst experiences of my life, food or otherwise: Natto.

Natto is rotten soybeans covered with bacterial slime and strands of mucous and fungus fur. It smells like a wet dog, and it burns your tongue like... well, dirty cooter is the only thing I can compare it to. Skanky, unhygenic, possibly infected dirty cooter.

You mix it with raw egg and eat it over rice. It is horrible. I'm sure it doesn't hold a candle to iguana or snake bile, but it made me feel like I was being punished.

The Quebec episode is mindblowing.

The Au Pied de Cochon foie gras orgy was fun to watch.

But the Inuit hunting, killing, and eating of a seal was incredible.

Bourdain, re the quesadillas at Bobby Flay's Las Vegas restaurant: "I hate it like poison."

Funny!