Wizard Of Oz Dept: Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, by Anthony Bourdain, Ecco, 282 pages. $28.99, according to Globe And Mail. Medium Raw , Bourdain’s sequel, takes stock of both the changes in his life and in the culinary world he inhabits. Which are quite a few. Bourdain kicked his heroin habit, got divorced, remarried spending time in between with a coked-up heiress, some plastic surgery victims and the Gadhafis on an island in the Caribbean . He is now a doting father – and blissfully uncool. The essence of cool is “not giving a fuck,” he writes and whether or not they knew it, they were living proof of Anthony Bourdain’s influence on North American culinary culture, and of a seismic shift in our dining culture over the past decade. Kitchen Confidential , Bourdain’s gritty tell-all memoir of life in New York’s culinary underbelly catapulted the chef to fame 10 years ago and made working the line in a professional kitchen seem cool. The disgruntled cook pulled back the Wizard of Oz’s curtain, exposing the industry’s tricks of the trade and forever ruining any pleasure a “civilian” could take in discount sushi or a Sunday eggs Benny. Along the way, he dished out stories of sex, drugs and the kind of antics that might even make Keith Richards blush. His new-found celebrity won him a second career as a popular television host A Cook's Tour , No Reservations . Suddenly, Bourdain was loose on the streets, searching out the craziest, wackiest, tastiest foods around the globe. The cook had left the kitchen. And we all wanted what he was having. As
reported in the news.
Related Webpage
@t globe and mail, culinary underbelly
11.6.10
