Bourdain on White

Last week I mentioned my thrill re: a biopic on Marco Pierre White happening; turns out I missed Bourdain a few months back yammering about the 25th anniversary of White's classic book (which I've never read), White Heat:

Ten years before my book Kitchen Confidential supposedly ‘ripped the lid off’ the grim realities of the restaurant business, White Heat brimmed with casual admissions of what we all knew as chefs: that it was a hard, brutal, repetitive business. That even if we could afford it, we were unlikely to be welcome in our dining rooms. That we were powerless without money. That only by being extraordinary – or at least convincing people that we were extraordinary – could we hope to live like our customers.

White Heat depicted a great chef who was heading straight at that thing we’d all seen: burn out. He knew it. Was conflicted by it. But it wasn’t slowing him down. He had somewhere to go and he’d figure it out when he got there.