The Nasty Bits, published in 2006, follows along a strain similar to his first behind-the-scenes culinary expose, Kitchen Confidential, published six years earlier. I love the insider's, voyeristic glimpse that Bourdin offers up in both publications, but this later book, divided into narrational segments as "Salty," "Sweet," "Sour," "Bitter" and "Umami," seems to empahsize more of the grit of the restaurant business, as he simultaneously writes with greater romantic and sentimental abandon about the actual food.
Bourdin describes his days now, as a work-a-day Manhattan chef turned international food writer and TV show host of No Reservations. This new lifestyle shift seems to have made him woefully reminiscent for his earlier days as a rough and tough, heroine-addicted youth in the kitchens of New Jersey and Manhattan - hard work and even harder play. He has softened, still a hard-core smoker and drinker, but constantly conflicted about this cushier new life as a traveling celebrity chef. Has he sold out? Maybe, but who cares when it means that he is able to bring us all such vivid, slurpy, sexy descriptions of his unique dining experiences from all over the world?
I have seen some episodes of No Reservations, from the first season, and I must say I enjoy reading Bourdin more than I enjoy watching him; experiencing both is informative, but his nervous personality ticks and the cheesey segues and vignettes they concoct for the television series are too much for me. Bourdin seems much more of a natural with culinary prose. When writing about his food travels he achieves those adrenaline-pumping, heart-stoppingly damn good food descriptions that make my taste buds quiver. For me, I appreciated seeing all the colorful and seductive visual descriptions of the dishes on the series, but I'll take more out of Bourdin's intelligent, enthusiastic and visceral written descriptions in The Nasty Bits any day.
It is truly Bourdin's love of food, framed by a life that has revelled in the grit and grime, that remain his thesis as he reflects upon his restaurant days, his friendships with and thoughts on other celebrity food chefs - man does he like to give Emeril and Bobby Flay a hard time (Flay deserves it, though) - and his mounting catalogue of international food adventures. When it comes down to it, how many other food writers are gonna say that dining with one's shoes on, as opposed to barefoot (as he did, joyously, while in the West Indies), is like "trying to eat in a straitjacket or f$ck through a shower curtain?" Very few. I love to hate the grit and grime he pushes on us readers as much as I hate to love it.
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