Medium Raw - A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

Anthony Bourdain

Ecco

2010

304 páginas

10h 8m

ISBN-13: 9780061718946

The long-awaited follow-up to the megabestseller Kitchen Confidential

In the ten years since his classic Kitchen Confidential first alerted us to the idiosyncrasies and lurking perils of eating out, from Monday fish to the breadbasket conspiracy, much has changed for the subculture of chefs and cooks, for the restaurant business—and for Anthony Bourdain.

Medium Raw explores these changes, moving back and forth from the author's bad old days to the present. Tracking his own strange and unexpected voyage from journeyman cook to globe-traveling professional eater and drinker, and even to fatherhood, Bourdain takes no prisoners as he dissects what he's seen, pausing along the way for a series of confessions, rants, investigations, and interrogations of some of the most controversial figures in food.

Beginning with a secret and highly illegal after-hours gathering of powerful chefs that he compares to a mafia summit, Bourdain pulls back the curtain—but never pulls his punches—on the modern gastronomical revolution, as only he can. Cutting right to the bone, Bourdain sets his sights on some of the biggest names in the foodie world, including David Chang, the young superstar chef who has radicalized the fine-dining landscape; the revered Alice Waters, whom he treats with unapologetic frankness; the Top Chef winners and losers; and many more.

And always he returns to the question "Why cook?" Or the more difficult "Why cook well?" Medium Raw is the deliciously funny and shockingly delectable journey to those answers, sure to delight philistines and gourmands alike.

Resenhas (1)

5 (Perfeito)

Life is a cruel joke.

Words from great cooks like Mr. Bourdain are humbling and relatable because my history, education, and experiences have finally led to a modicum of character, humility, and a loss of ego. This satisfaction only came to me later this year through extensive reading, cultivating great habits to self-regulate my emotions and attain mental clarity to make better decisions. This cruel joke called life can and will crush us in the most creative ways, almost always ignited by people. And Mr. Bourdain has a great deal to say about people.
Remember these fine words from Bourdain: Who in the world gets to do only what they want, and what they feel consistent with their principles, and get paid for it? Not me. Kindness does not have room inside the professional kitchen, but passion does. Passion, intertwined with discipline, character, healthy habits, and humility, is the path these great minds preach—the path of inner coherence inside a world lacking justice, the path I am trying so hard to traverse. Human folly, vanity, ego, self-centered image, and greed have a major presence in this world, but at what cost?
Former Celebrity Chef, writer, and devoted Mr. Anthony Bourdain has much to tell us about this bloody valentine: People who cook. This is a refined sequel to Kitchen Confidential, a more complex recipe, with an order of magnitude higher than food: Human affairs. I sincerely believe these takeouts are not fatalism, but clarity about human nature itself, recognizing the major presence of damaged and messed-up people living from rage and fear, dissatisfied with how things turned out in their lives and living as if the world owes them something.
Have you ever wondered how dreams in this segment die or how they are realized? How often? I'm not speaking out of my mind; my humble job so far is to study and pass on those wise knowledges from the Great Chefs. Culinary insights from the greats I have read so far sum up to half a millennium, and here are some insights that "sure fucking help," in Mr. Bourdain's words: If you don't take the trouble to find out who you are, you're most likely to perish. The pace is madness, searing heat, never-ending stress and melodrama, and a lack of anything resembling a normal life.
This is not a review of compliments; this is a review of this multi-faceted man who made his mark on the world we live in. I'm not saying his epic feats excuse his bad behavior, his callousness, his recklessness, and he knew that. All I'm saying is: There's a reason, a profound reason behind the behavior of Batali, Ramsay, Marco, and it's important to understand how the strands are woven together. It can be hard to remove the dark ones without unraveling the whole cloth. Hard men from humble beginnings, beaten down by life, by the malice of our perverse nature.
More to the point: In-between major subjects, Chef Bourdain critiques the culture of ultra-processed food, imparts lessons to his daughter, explores the delicate intersection between Chefs and restaurant reviewers, emphasizes the importance of an unofficial intelligence network, delves into the association of food and personalities, takes us behind the curtains of TV shows, explores the fraught nature of patisserie, discusses the unwanted freebies served for great Chefs when stepping into any other restaurant, and reflects on his references and heroes like Batali and Le Bernardin, among other thousand reflections.
Furthermore, I wanted to highlight three of Chef Bourdain's philosophical thoughts: Novices must not be resistant to instructions, must be fast, never complain, get injured, call in sick, nor come with inconvenient baggage like "normal" lives outside of the kitchen. Secondly: Don't crumble before the searing heat, never-ending stress, melodrama, low pay, inequity, cuts, and burns. And lastly: Cooking is about control, and eating is about submission. We shouldn't be intellectualizing what we're eating; we should be mindful of the feelings.

Rest in peace, Chef Bourdain.
"All heroes have flaws, some tragic, some conquered, and those we cast as villains can be complex. Even the best people, he wrote, are 'molded out of faults.'" -Shakespeare

Link to my highlights: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qixEJins8tQxYCugSxpcCQ2D6pwqzZOH/view?usp=sharing