Literary, Culinary Interests

[Jinmyo]

What literary figures or trends interest you?

What culinary figures or trends interest you?

What's the real deal?

[bourdain]

Literary figures/trends who interest me? Nabokov, James Crumley, Daniel Woodrell, Graham Greene, De Lillo, Malcolm Lowry, JG Ballard, Ross Macdonald, biographies of crackpot "Orientalist" explorers like Sir Francis Richard Burton, memoirs by ex-spies, Alan Furst, Lermontov, Fitzgerald, Vietnam era war correspondents bios, Freeling's The Kitchen, Orwell, Bemelmans..and just about anything else that catches my fancy. I read very quickly. Lately, I've enjoyed Dirk Wittenborn's Fierce People..Michael Collins' The Resurrectionists, Will Ferguson's HappinessTM and I'm absolutely riveted by the work of Nick Tosches--all of it.

Culinary Figures?  I have been rightly accused of being at times, more interested in cooks--and the subculture of cooking than in the actual food itself. Fergus Henderson and Gordon Ramsay, I've gone on and on about--obviously I like both them and their food. I'm a big fan of Donovan Cooke in Melbourne--a brilliant cook and a madman...Tetsuya Wakuda in Sydney...Keller, of course--will always be for me, the Top Dog in fine dining. I think Doug Rodriguez is onto something...I will always be grateful for Gabrielle Hamilton at Prune for putting on the bone marrow..and I like her, her restaurant, her approach to food..Norman Van Aiken is about as far away from my kind of cooking as you can get--but I think he's a terrific practitioner of "fusion" at its best--a good example of that not always being a dirty word..Scott Bryan at Veritas, naturally, Eric Ripert at Le Bernardin..love what Tom Valenti does to a piece of meat...like Wylie Dufesne's stuff..Rocco di Spirito's..and love nothing more than to sit down across from Yasuda-san at Sushi Yasuda for the full-bore tasting (He's an ex-boxer and can talk Ali Frazier while dealing out the most amazing array of hard-to-find straight from the hip sushi). Paul Kahan at Blackbird in Chicago...Daniel Boulud, of course...I think Mario Batali is a force for good in the world--and particularly love Lupa--the only traditional format cooking show to do God's work--meaning highlighting oily, bony little fish, hooves, snouts, shanks, and guts..There are a lot of good chefs out there. If there is a hopeful trend it's in the direction that Mario's going. No nonsense, let-the-ingredient-speak casual eating.

[bourdain]

The "Real Deal"? Implies the same in person as on TV (see Nigella). Also used when referring to a chef who delivers the goods as advertised--without bullshit, trickery, nonsense, irrelevant distractions or fabrication--as in Fergus Henderson.