Nasty Bite
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Nasty Bite
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Nasty Bits Perfect Paperback – May 1, 2007
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4.7 out of 5 stars
1,094 ratings
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Anthony Bourdain (1956-2018) is the author of the bestselling Kitchen Confidential , the Urban Historical Typhoid Mary , and A Cook's Tour , which was turned into a successful series by the same name for the Food Network. His novels include The Bobby Gold Stories , Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo .
Publisher
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Bloomsbury Adult; Reprint edition (May 1, 2007) Language
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English Perfect Paperback
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304 pages ISBN-10
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1596913606 ISBN-13
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978-1596913608 Item Weight
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11.2 ounces Dimensions
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5.71 x 0.87 x 8.15 inches
4.7 out of 5 stars
1,094 ratings
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`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.
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.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Some prime cuts, some mechanically-recovered meat
If you are in any way interested in food you cannot go wrong with this collection of articles. The book starts by explaining "Systieme D",the methods by which restaurant kitchens avoid the disaster of "losing it" via methods best kept from the diners, and later critiques the phenomenon of celebrity chefs, few of which have ever been inside one of their own restaurant kitchens for quite a few years. The best chapters are "The Cook's Companions" in which Bourdain lays out how NOT to run a restaurant and "Is Celebrity Killing the Great Chefs?" in which he explains how it is possible to go from being the Justin Timberlake of world cooking to the Chesney Hawkes. The book is peppered throughout with mini-travelogues on China, Vietnam and Singapore (no prizes for guessing which part of the world's cooking Bourdain likes best) and at the end he retrospectively reviews his own writing including berating himself for writing a piece bemoaning how it is no longer possible to buy crack while simultaneously watching a live sex show in cleaned-up, post-Giuliani New York. If you liked Kitchen Confidential this is more of the same from the now-a-celebrity Chef Bourdain.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unbeatable eating entertainment
Following up on Kitchen Confidential and Medium Raw I didn't think there would be much left in the food tank for further eating entertainment but Anthony showed a huge apetite for interesting asides and titbits and recipes for the unusual and the bizarre from around the world. Always witty and with a machinegun use of culinary terminology he leaves you stunned by his voracious appetite for life. Brilliant.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rock n Roll meets Mis en Place
Probably the most readable chef written books are Anthony Bourdains. Sassy, informed, introspective. Willing to slate the rubbish and stand by it. Rock and Roll meets the mis en place. If any chef deserves a final career making TV shows, writing books and travelling the globe this guy does. A true wordsmith whose prose rolls along like poetry.
Looks to be in excellent condition, more shop worn than used, very happy with my purchase, one more to add to my Bourdain collection.
3.0 out of 5 stars
First and second courses were great but then it all turned into a bit of a pudding.
Having read Kitchen Confidential, I was just in the mood for another serving of Anthony Bourdain. However, this just goes to show that you can have too much of a good thing - I skipped through the last few chapters as they started to all seem the same, which was a shame as it got off to good start.
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New York Times Bestseller The good, the bad, and the ugly, served up Bourdain-style. Bestselling chef and Parts Unknown host Anthony Bourdain has never been one to pull punches. In The Nasty Bits , he serves up a well-seasoned hellbroth of candid, often outrageous stories from his worldwide misadventures. Whether scrounging for eel in the backstreets of Hanoi, revealing what you didn't want to know about the more unglamorous aspects of making television, calling for the head of raw food activist Woody Harrelson, or confessing to lobster-killing guilt, Bourdain is as entertaining as ever. Bringing together the best of his previously uncollected nonfiction--and including new, never-before-published material-- The Nasty Bits is a rude, funny, brutal and passionate stew for fans and the uninitiated alike.
“High- and low-lights from the culinary world by the delightfully jaded chef.” ― People “His writing is at its most savory in passages about the joys of sharing food with people who love it. His words are not always gentlemanly, but they vividly convey how, say, sitting on the plastic-covered kitchen floor of an Inuit family's house and joining in as they eagerly tear into the raw liver, brain and blubber of a freshly killed seal can be, as Mr. Bourdain says, a moment of rare intimacy, pleasure and indeed beauty.” ― Wall Street Journal “Lovable rogue chef and author of Kitchen Confidential describes stomach-roiling feasts in exotic lands and snipes at celebrity chefs in this entertaining tome.” ― Chicago Tribune “A vivid and witty writer…[Bourdain's] greatest gift is his ability to convey his passion for professional cooking...In Bourdain's telling this is inspiring, band-of-brothers stuff, a tale of the trenches where ends almost always justify means.” ― New York Times Book Review “[An] informed and unvarnished view from the kitchen...[Bourdain's] best writing can make food lovers quiver like raw fish.” ― Cleveland Plain Dealer
Chef, author, and raconteur Anthony Bourdain is best known for traveling the globe on his TV show Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. Somewhat notoriously, he has established himself as a professional gadfly, bête noir, advocate, social critic, and pork enthusiast, recognized for his caustic sense of humor worldwide. He is as unsparing of those things he hates, as he is evangelical about his passions.
Bourdain is the author of the New York Times bestselling Kitchen Confidential and Medium Raw; A Cook’s Tour; the collection The Nasty Bits; the novels Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo; the biography Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical; two graphic novels, Get Jiro! and Get Jiro!: Blood and Sushi and his latest New York Times bestselling cookbook Appetites. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Times of London, Bon Appetit, Gourm
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