Many view the beloved Anthony Bourdain as someone whose career was built around cooking and cuisine, as he was most famous for his popular food and travel shows. More dedicated fans may also know of his book Kitchen Confidential, which launched his career. It is no secret that Bourdain was a writer, but Laurie Woolever’s book Bourdain The Definitive Oral Biography offers a different perspective on Bourdain’s legacy, a writer who became a chef rather than the other way around.
Woolever’s book is a collection of interviews with those closest to Bourdain throughout his life. His mother and brother both recall Anthony’s early love for writing, and anyone who came into contact with him became mesmerized by his ability to tell a good story. Before getting into cooking, Anthony’s interests were centered around writing. However, after spending a summer working as a dishwasher in Provincetown, MA he became enthralled with the grungy, unhealthy, and hardworking lifestyle of kitchens.
Bourdain spent over a decade in the restaurant industry, running kitchens across Manhattan. During this time, he began writing, originally fiction novels. In 1995 he had his first book published, Bone in the Throat, a crime novel that takes revolves around a chef in Little Italy who becomes involved in the mob. His second novel, Gone Bamboo, was published two years later and is another crime story taking place in the West Indies. Neither of these books did super well among the public, but Bourdain continued writing.
After getting clean from heroin, Bourdain poured everything he had when he wasn’t working in a kitchen into his writing. Waking up early in the morning to write before work after getting little sleep the night before he told his longtime friend Helen Lang, “such was my lust to see my name in print”. Anthony’s desire to become a writer was about much more than just discussing cuisine and culture, and it wasn’t until publishing friends convinced him to write about the kitchens of New York City that food became the focus of his writing.
Bourdain’s breakthrough into the writing world was a piece published in The New Yorker titled “Don’t Eat Before Reading This“ in 1999. His exposé on the realities of the restaurant world was an instant hit, not only because of the content but because of Bourdain’s famous ability to intrigue audiences. The New Yorker Essay would become the basis of Kitchen Confidential, which changed his life forever.
What is critical in understanding a bit more of who Bourdain was, is to understand that the art of what he did always came before a quest to entertain or please. Bourdain loved cooking, food, travel, and learning about the world. However his ability to do these things and share them with all of us did not come from being a world-famous chef, it came from being an incredible writer.
