As many of you foodies are aware, Anthony Bourdain passed away this week. For those of you who don’t know about him, he was a renowned chef, TV show host and author. Food was central to everything he did.
Dave Brown, AASV webmaster, reminded me about an article Bourdain penned for the New Yorker magazine in April 1999 revealing many of the secrets of the restaurant business. In "Don’t Eat Before Reading This," Bourdain makes the following observation: "Like most other chefs I know, I’m amused when I hear people object to pork on nonreligious grounds. "Swine are filthy animals," they say. These people have obviously never visited a poultry farm. Chicken–America’s favorite food–goes bad quickly; handled carelessly, it infects other foods with salmonella; and it bores the hell out of chefs. It occupies its ubiquitous place on menus as an option for customers who can’t decide what they want to eat. Most chefs believe that supermarket chickens in this country are slimy and tasteless compared with European varieties. Pork, on the other hand, is cool. Farmers stopped feeding garbage to pigs decades ago, and even if you eat pork rare you’re more likely to win the Lotto than to contract trichinosis. Pork tastes different, depending on what you do with it, but chicken always tastes like chicken."
Enjoy your journey to Parts Unknown, Mr. Bourdain.