I Hate Anthony Bourdain

I hate Anthony Bourdain. OK, I don't really hate him, hell I don't even know him. I think he'd be fun to hang out with. A little full of himself probably but good fun I'd imagine. He drops a lot of names so we could get out "celebrity" on! What I hate is that he wrote a book like Kitchen Confidential before I had the balls or the better yet the focus to write it on my own. He's probably a better writer than I am, but he ain't got any better stories than I do! As many of you probably know I was in the restaurant business for more than 20 years. Started when I was 16 as a "busboy" at a bar called the Parrot in Bayport Long Island. It was a long time ago and I think I was working there with my friend Frank Massa...maybe his older brother worked there...I don't even think we got paid, but I learned how to carry 9 beer mugs in one hand.

I guess I hate him because he's an innovator. Sometimes when you see innovation it seems so simple. You say, "shit, I coulda done that! He's making money off that bullshit?" Its crazy! I'm thinking of this because I've been reading another of his books called The Nasty Bits. It's just a series of essays that he's published in news papers and magazines but they're all along the same lines, talking about the crazy situations, incredible hard work and insane people you come in contact with when you work in the "hospitality industry." I think he seriously overstates this concept of kitchen guys as this rouge band of tough guys with questionable morals...(ok, maybe the questionable morals part is true) that no one else understands and everyone is afraid of. That's all pretty much bullshit. I never met a chef that intimidated me. (except Mike Soper who's the scariest man with one leg and Ann Cashion who intimidates me with her sheer talent!). Maybe I should have been intimidated by some, I'm not that smart. But in general chefs are just like everybody else, some tough guys, some..not so tough. But it is true that all of us in that industry do share a kind of brotherhood which is hard to describe. To this day my best friends, my best clients and all of my loves have been people who I either worked behind the bar with, met in the restaurant, who worked in the industry in the past or I admired their work at another restaurant. Chefs have a hard life, but so do waiters and hostesses and busboys and bartenders. Maybe one reason I feel less than impressed though thoroughly entertained with his stories of toil and debauchery is that I've done probably the only other job that's at least as hard as being a chef. Designing an building restaurants for chefs...most chefs don't know anything about opening or running a business. Then they hire people who do to help them and ignore them because they're so damned arrogant. I never fret over restaurants that close becasue they probably shouldn't have been open in the first place. Running a restaurant is tedious and mind-nummingly difficult work. Building and opening restaurants is terrifying and more intense than anything I've ever done. Everyday you stare disaster in the face, and not just the "I'm in the weeds, dinners are pissed off, we're out of shell steak" types of disasters; we're talking about decisions that could cost your client hundreds of thousands of dollars tomorrow type disasters!!! (Like "hey, is this $2MM building we just finished 3' too close to the highway?" or like this discussion I once had with a fire marhsall; :"yes I know your owner as spent over $500K on this opening party tonight but if that elevator call button isn't fixed in 10 minutes you're not getting an occupancy permit until I get back from vacation next week"). I guess at the end of the day it's this kind of madness, and our love of it which keeps those of us in the hospitality business tied together like a family. Like my friend Marilu Munoz said to me last night, "you hate Bourdain? I think I love him"...I guess he's ok. He's family!