14/05/2024
“So, there I was, age 44. I was still dunking french fries at Brasserie Les Halles, which I thought was a pretty good gig at the time.
But, there was this little free paper they gave out on corners in a little box called The New York Press. I thought, I’m going to write something that will entertain other cooks, maybe I’ll get a hundred bucks, and my fry cook will find this funny. So, I wrote that first piece, that first version of [Kitchen Confidential] with the intention of being published by the New York Press and making 100 bucks, and being a hero to a few fry cooks in New York.
I wrote it and I sent it to The New York Press… So, every week I’d run to the corner. ‘Oh, I’m gonna be in the free paper!’ and I wasn’t in there. And, in a moment of frustration and possible inebriation, I mentioned this to my mom who said, ‘Well, you should send it to The New Yorker. I know somebody there. They’ll read it.’ And I’m thinking, what is the statistical likelihood ever, even if you’re represented? There’s no chance. Ever.
Out of alcohol-fueled hubris and on the insistence of my mom, I stuffed a copy, a print of this thing I’d written into an envelope and sent it off to The New Yorker, and thought that’s the last I will ever hear of this. Then, a month and a half later, the kitchen phone rings, and it’s David Remnick, the publisher from The New Yorker saying we’d like to run this piece.
And when it ran, it transformed my life within two days... Everything changed. Everything. From that point on.”
–Bourdain
Photo: Anthony Bourdain outside of Les Halles in New York City, early 2000s
Quote: The New Yorker Festival, 2017
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