As TV’s “No Reservations” star and general badass chef Anthony Bourdain prepares to bring his celebrity to the Lowell Memorial Auditorium Jan. 9, and while Julie and Julia move from the big screen to pay per view, I romanticize this restaurant life I have “chosen” as a bit of a rags to riches story.
Whether you tune in regularly to Bourdain’s entertaining and popular food slash travel show on The Travel Channel, or to the new “Man v. Food”; whether you join millions for Bravo’s “Top Chef” or, perhaps, Food Network’s “Chopped” and “The Next Food Network Star,” the simple truth is this: Whereas we once were an industry characterized by bad dress (picture yellow shirt and brown tie), wayward staff members, gum-chewing servers and the unshaven cook with lit cigarette hanging from his mouth as the stew was stirred, our star has now risen. (Don’t laugh. As a brand new, 22-year-old manager, when I told this cook to lose the butt, he told me to “go…”, well, spend some time with myself.)
On a weekly basis, Bourdain opens our eyes to a world of global culinary traditions, whether you would eat camel or not. And he can be funny, if you appreciate a man who eats whatever is on his plate and says whatever is on his mind. Bourdain will never be accused of being refined. I recall horror when reading his first book, the “unlikely bestseller” “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly,” as he described the melting, then straining, of table butter previously used by the guests … in order to cook with it later. “Chef Bourdain, please!” I remember fretting. “What happens in the kitchen stays in the kitchen!”
And yet, here we are, our new reality. Although the current show “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” on Food Network pays homage more to our current food roots, this $566 billion dollar food service industry is now also one that boasts scores of celebrity chefs, guest hosts, best sellers, iron masters, prime time appearances and Las Vegas destinations, and is a leader of social causes far and wide.
Whether you now say “Bam” with a flick of the wrist as you Creole your crawfish and panko your pawpaw, or you are a stay-at-home chef who is just as keen on Paula Deen — as mayonnaise morphs to aioli while guests critique the gastrique — I say this … with a beloved grandfather in mind: “We’ve come a long way, baby!”
When Bourdain’s book first appeared in 2000, I reveled in personal “kinship” as he described a culinary awakening as a young boy while in a small boat with family members in southwestern France. After braving a slimy and briny, freshly plucked then shucked oyster, Bourdain recalls realizing his future. I likewise recalled the feeling of crunchy, fishy nori seaweed melting on my tongue at Akasaka on 34th Street in New York, growing up in the Big Apple and the drama of watching pigeon boned tableside, cooking on hot rocks and the sexy shaken martini when it was still just gin and vermouth.
(Unlike Bourdain, I have yet to hire a film crew to follow me on my mule in Bolivia, up the Andes, whilst preparing for a dinner of mountain goat and grasshoppers! I digress…)
The restaurant life has come of age. Like a fine Bordeaux, after years of planting and growing, tending and handpicking, crushing and turning and then tasting … or a cave-aged cheese, after raising and nurturing, herding and milking, churning and tending the evolving product … so often the best of something is the result of years of painstaking commitment, hard work and tender loving care.
So, as I watch — and surely laugh at — the Bourdain show, having perhaps even shaved beforehand, I will do so proud and content in the knowledge that although we only worked so hard because that’s what the job required, the recognition and finally the respect that our “labor of love” now receives is entertainment all its own.
Oh, and that the “three-second rule” would never … ever be employed in one of my restaurants!
Scott Plath, along with his wife Kathleen, own Cobblestones of Lowell and moonstones, in Chelmsford, MA. Scott possesses a deep well of humorous and insightful stories that he will share with us regularly.
A View from the Kitchen – No Reservations, No Regrets
Whether you tune in regularly to Bourdain’s entertaining and popular food slash travel show on The Travel Channel, or to the new “Man v. Food”; whether you join millions for Bravo’s “Top Chef” or, perhaps, Food Network’s “Chopped” and “The Next Food Network Star,” the simple truth is this: Whereas we once were an industry characterized by bad dress (picture yellow shirt and brown tie), wayward staff members, gum-chewing servers and the unshaven cook with lit cigarette hanging from his mouth as the stew was stirred, our star has now risen. (Don’t laugh. As a brand new, 22-year-old manager, when I told this cook to lose the butt, he told me to “go…”, well, spend some time with myself.)
On a weekly basis, Bourdain opens our eyes to a world of global culinary traditions, whether you would eat camel or not. And he can be funny, if you appreciate a man who eats whatever is on his plate and says whatever is on his mind. Bourdain will never be accused of being refined. I recall horror when reading his first book, the “unlikely bestseller” “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly,” as he described the melting, then straining, of table butter previously used by the guests … in order to cook with it later. “Chef Bourdain, please!” I remember fretting. “What happens in the kitchen stays in the kitchen!”
And yet, here we are, our new reality. Although the current show “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” on Food Network pays homage more to our current food roots, this $566 billion dollar food service industry is now also one that boasts scores of celebrity chefs, guest hosts, best sellers, iron masters, prime time appearances and Las Vegas destinations, and is a leader of social causes far and wide.
Whether you now say “Bam” with a flick of the wrist as you Creole your crawfish and panko your pawpaw, or you are a stay-at-home chef who is just as keen on Paula Deen — as mayonnaise morphs to aioli while guests critique the gastrique — I say this … with a beloved grandfather in mind: “We’ve come a long way, baby!”
When Bourdain’s book first appeared in 2000, I reveled in personal “kinship” as he described a culinary awakening as a young boy while in a small boat with family members in southwestern France. After braving a slimy and briny, freshly plucked then shucked oyster, Bourdain recalls realizing his future. I likewise recalled the feeling of crunchy, fishy nori seaweed melting on my tongue at Akasaka on 34th Street in New York, growing up in the Big Apple and the drama of watching pigeon boned tableside, cooking on hot rocks and the sexy shaken martini when it was still just gin and vermouth.
(Unlike Bourdain, I have yet to hire a film crew to follow me on my mule in Bolivia, up the Andes, whilst preparing for a dinner of mountain goat and grasshoppers! I digress…)
The restaurant life has come of age. Like a fine Bordeaux, after years of planting and growing, tending and handpicking, crushing and turning and then tasting … or a cave-aged cheese, after raising and nurturing, herding and milking, churning and tending the evolving product … so often the best of something is the result of years of painstaking commitment, hard work and tender loving care.
So, as I watch — and surely laugh at — the Bourdain show, having perhaps even shaved beforehand, I will do so proud and content in the knowledge that although we only worked so hard because that’s what the job required, the recognition and finally the respect that our “labor of love” now receives is entertainment all its own.
Oh, and that the “three-second rule” would never … ever be employed in one of my restaurants!
Scott Plath, along with his wife Kathleen, own Cobblestones of Lowell and moonstones, in Chelmsford, MA. Scott possesses a deep well of humorous and insightful stories that he will share with us regularly.