Arkaitz

“properly organized, fully loaded line cook, one who works clean, and has 'moves' — meaning economy of movement, nice technique and, most important, speed”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“I can break down line cooks into three subgroups. You've got your Artists: the annoying, high-maintenance minority. This group includes specialists like pâtissiers (the neurologists of cooking), sous-chefs, butchers, garde-manger psychos, the occasional saucier whose sauces are so ethereal and perfect that delusions of grandeur are tolerated.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“was a disgrace, a disappointment to friends and family and myself — and the drugs and the booze no longer chased that disappointment away. I could no longer bear even to pick up the phone; I'd just listen to the answering machine, afraid or unwilling to pick up, the plaintive entreaties of the caller an annoyance. If they had good news, it would simply make me envious and unhappy; if they had bad news, I was the last guy in the world who could help. Whatever I had to say to anybody would have been inappropriate. I was in hiding, in a deep, dark hole, and it was dawning on me — as I cracked my oysters, and opened clams, and spooned cocktail sauce into ramekins — that it was time, really time, to try to climb out.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“For the rest of that summer, and in later summers, I'd often slip off by myself to the little stands by the port, where one could buy brown paper bags of unwashed, black-covered oysters by the dozen. After a few lessons from my new soul-mate, blood brother and bestest buddy, Monsieur Saint-Jour — who was now sharing his after-work bowls of sugared vin ordinaire with me too — I could easily open the oysters by myself, coming in from behind with the knife and popping the hinge like it was Aladdin's cave.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly