CROSS-POSTED at Reb's Reading Rants and Raves Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain My rating: 5 of 5 stars cw: suicide I wasn't prepared for the emotional journey I would take in listening to Anthony Bourdain read this book, originally published in 2000. Published at a time that didn't know Covid. Published at a time when sensibilities were altogether different. Published at a time, of course, when Anthony Bourdain was alive. Of course what was raw and real and shocking in 2000 is still so today--perhaps more so. But it takes on new meaning to hear Bourdain's bravado in joking about suicide, his unabashed love for the rough and tumble culinary world, and his blasé attitude toward airborne illnesses, the like of which he never lived to see. While certainly one could criticize Bourdain's own seeming acceptance of the sexism and toxicity that he says is innate to the "culinary underbelly", the fact remains there
On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And thro' the field the road runs by To many-tower'd Camelot; And up and down the people go, Gazing in the oven low, Round a kitchen island there below, The kitchen of Shallot. (With apologies to Tennyson)