Bite me!

Bad-boy chef and globe-trotting gourmet Anthony Bourdain gets frank about rude vegans, Rachael Ray and why restaurants are America's last meritocracy.

By Page Rockwell

Read more: Cooking, Page Rockwell, Life, Food and Travel

June 26, 2006 | "I don't think there was a mouthful of food I had in two days that didn't have sand, fur or shit in it." Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain has a lot to say about his recent trip to Namibia, where he filmed a segment for his Travel Channel show, "No Reservations" -- and where he didn't exactly get the Brangelina treatment.

"I was staying with the Bushmen in the Kalahari," Bourdain says, "and the food is wart hog, pretty much on the hoof. They hack it up, scoop it out -- not under the most hygienic of circumstances -- and throw it in the fire, fur and all."

Not that that's a bad thing. These days, braving the world's most extreme cuisine is just part of Bourdain's job. In the six years since the breakout publication of "Kitchen Confidential," Bourdain's macho memoir-cum-food-industry exposé, the restaurant veteran has traded kitchen life for more glamorous work as a globe-trotting writer and TV host.

Despite his success, Bourdain tries not to seem too pampered. "You don't want to hear me gloating about nibbling Ibérico ham with Ferran Adrià at a table in the back of a little Spanish ham shop," he writes in his newest book, a collection of essays titled "The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones." "You want to picture me crawling across a cold tile floor, coughing stomach lining into something that only the hotel manager could refer to as a toilet." Bourdain may enjoy an enviably jet-setting second career, but he's smart enough to know that it's his willingness to sample sandy wart hog -- or raw seal brains, or a still-beating cobra heart -- that keeps viewers coming back for more.

It helps that Bourdain brings the same appealingly dark humor to all his ventures, whether yachting in the Caribbean or exploring the Mall of America. His caustic commentary on swimming with piranhas and drinking local Mexican beverages "with the consistency of snot" is most of the fun of "No Reservations." Bourdain's also refreshingly frank about his foibles, including his former cocaine and heroin addiction. On the other hand, he can be fiercely intolerant of American tourists, vegetarians and many of his fellow celebrity chefs (among other populations), and his brand of bombast isn't for everyone; food writer Jeffrey Steingarten once sniped that Bourdain was "clever with obscenities" but had "the values and tastes of a British soccer hoodlum."

Considering Bourdain's surly reputation, "The Nasty Bits" is surprisingly upbeat. It offers charitable views on Las Vegas restaurants, overworked wait staff and Bourdain's one-time whipping boy, chef Emeril Lagasse. Bourdain even reflects on the braggadocio of his own early writing, admitting that, "like an aging guy worried about his penis who suddenly buys a too-fast-for-him sports car, I think I was overcompensating." Unfortunately, despite these moments of graciousness, "Nasty Bits" suffers from an uneven mingling of great and mediocre material. Even Bourdain acknowledges that he wrote the essays in part because, as he puts it, "I always think for sure the next book or the next show will tank, and I better make some fucking money while I can." Still, many of the scraps -- as when Bourdain goes into an unhinged rage over Woody Harrelson's raw-food activism -- will have readers snorting with laughter as they read them.

Salon met Bourdain at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, where he took a break from his book tour to talk about his hatred for TV chef Rachael Ray, his fondness for foie gras and the worst meal he ever had.

"The Nasty Bits" finishes with some explanatory, sometimes even apologetic, endnotes about the essays. Are you happy with way the book turned out?

Yes. There was a review that said "what a rip-off, it's old stuff!" Well, that's why I called it "The Nasty Bits." How explicit could I be? Collected, varietal cuts, scraps, bones -- that's what it is. I'm happy I got the chance to do an afterword, to realize, OK, that was an entertaining piece, but I don't believe that anymore. Or even, it's an entertaining piece, but what asshole wrote this?

I always entertain the notion that I'm wrong, or that I'll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing. But it's not a problem for me to change positions. For instance, I think that beating up on Emeril was turning into shtick. He looks like [legendary chef Georges Auguste] Escoffier now compared to some of the bobble-heads who are on that network.

Bobble-heads! Care to name names?

Rachael Ray. She's paid more and is more popular [than Emeril], and I see a day when the executives say, we don't need Emeril anymore, even though he built their network. They'll replace him with some industry-created freakozoid who's been grown from a seedling into a recognized brand. When you look at Sandra Lee or Rachael Ray or some of the new shows like "Calorie Commando" that are just vomit-inducing -- at least Emeril worked his way up and has a real restaurant empire.

And he has been nice to me, shown incredible good humor about me calling him an Ewok. I went out drinking in New Orleans years ago with a lot of his cooks and employees, and they said he's a good boss, a fair guy who looks after his people.

I still hate the show! But even the show, compared to Rocco DiSpirito, is Shakespeare. Rocco's a really talented cook, way more talented than I ever was. But he wanted, with such an unholy fervor, to be on TV, to be loved by strangers.

Which isn't really your approach?

I truly don't give a fuck.

What do you make of the celebrity-chef craze? Why are audiences so obsessed with cooking shows now?

I think maybe it comes from a sense of dislocation; if you've left home and moved to a big city, you yearn for some kind of normal, stabilizing, nurturing kind of experience. I dunno, I'm guessing.

I think most chefs I've spoken to don't really understand it. How come they like us now? When I started cooking, a bad customer would come in, abuse the waiter, send the soup back, and a line cook in a good restaurant could feel free to spit in the soup. And the chef would see it, and everyone would laugh, because there was no pride; there was no hope; there was no expectation of any kind of future success or prestige. So the celebrity-chef thing, for whatever reason it happened, I think has been good for diners. It's certainly been good for chefs!

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