{Review #4} Two Books to Take you Straight to the Kitchen

I don't cook much, but I sure do love to eat...

So it might be curious that some of my favorite food writing are not food reviews themselves (although I sure do enjoy those) but pieces that get into the nitty gritty aspect of the kitchen and/or food making industry as a whole. 

This is why I was absolutely fascinated by Bourdain's honest fast-paced depiction of his "adventures in the culinary underbelly". It is entirely gripping, it taught me plenty about the craft, and was unapologetically upfront about the lifestyle, as well as the New York City restaurant scene. 

Bourdain talked about his privileged upbringing and how he was willing to squander it all until he found cooking, and how that world straightened and ignited him. And how it continued to do so. He had no illusions about himself or the industry, yet still readily admitted his passion and commitment to the work. In addition to it all, Kitchen Confidential is extremely well written. 

I was actually surprised by how well paced it was... and then I found out the reason (in a section in which he goes to Japan and he takes the opportunity to promote his books): Bourdain was also a writer (as in, not only this memoir but several others, plus fiction novels!). And it shows. The prose is lively, transporting, and the book structure itself is quite clever, making it a fun engaging narrative on top of a very informative non-fiction book about cooking.

So after that absolute delight of a memoir, I began looking for a worthy successor. I searched high and low for list after list of the greatest food memoirs of all time, and though I took notes and ordered some of them, none seemed to even promise to deliver the intensity I craved for. 

Until I found Sous Chef, discretely tucked away the food writing food writing corner at Rizzoli's. 

Sous Chef does what it promises on the tin. It shows the reader what 24 hours in the life of a line sous chef look like, but it does so in an extraordinary effective manner: "you" are the sous chef. In doing so, this book is not a memoir of Gibney as a person but rather a memoir of the craft, and a great one indeed.

The second person is successful because Gibney, apart from being a great writer, is also honest about the job: he doesn't romanticize it, yet allows his love for it shine through. He admits that the characters, though based collectively on real people, are his own concoction (pun intended). This may bother some, but it does nothing to diminish my opinion of this book. It doesn't matter if Gibney's kitchen is made up, a stand-in for all similar places in NYC—his story rings true at all times.

Needless to say, I devoured (pun intended, I do love my puns) this book, just as I had done Bourdain's a couple of months before.

So there you have it, folks! Two absorbing (is this a pun?) cooking memoirs that pair extremely well together. Enjoy!

(Footnote. I do not think that cooking memoirs need to take this approach to cooking or food. It was just what I was in the mood for at the time. I also read and appreciate other styles of food writing, and may very soon return reviewing some of those.)