Savior/inadvertent underminer?
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A decade ago, Kitchen Confidential rocked the civilian food world, transforming chefs into gritty, hard-living rock stars who didn’t flinch at drug use, foul language, or the errant ass-slap. But there was an ironic upshot to all that, as Francis Lam points out in Salon: “Realizing that their careers were no longer built solely on the plate, chefs and restaurateurs got ready for their close-up,” he writes, noting that kitchens are now cleaner, prettier, less profane, and less welcoming of the crass behavior of yesteryear. This is almost certainly not what Anthony Bourdain had in mind as his legacy — is it time to mourn the “restaurant-as-pirate-ship”? [Salon]
