Hannah Goldfield on Anthony Bourdain's "Don't Eat Before Reading This"

"Bourdain's elaborate passage explaining why this was true had first been published, in The New Yorker, in the 1999 essay "Don't Eat Before Reading This," which he expanded, rapidly, into "Kitchen Confidential." (The short answer was that "many fish purveyors don't deliver on Saturday, so the chances are that the Monday-night tuna you want has been kicking around in the kitchen since Friday morning, under God knows what conditions"; the long answer took you deep into the culture and psychology of the restaurant business.)"

"It was the summer of 2002, two years after he published "Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly," a seminal and unsparing account of life as a chef in restaurant kitchens. I was fifteen, and on vacation with a friend and her family, on Long Island. My friend's father was reading the paperback and shared aloud one of the dirty secrets in the book, which we all took, immediately, as gospel: one should never order fish on a Monday."

Anthony Bourdain rose to wide recognition after Kitchen Confidential revealed the gritty realities of restaurant kitchens and pragmatic rules for diners. A memorable rule explained that many fish purveyors skip Saturday deliveries, leaving Monday-night fish potentially days old. The origin story traces a 1999 New Yorker essay expanded into the book, with an initial rejection by the New York Press and later acceptance after a personal recommendation to The New Yorker's editor. Bourdain expected a small, insular readership but the piece rapidly transformed his life and career, exposing readers to the culture and psychology of professional kitchens.

Read at The New Yorker