Medium Raw: Well done

Anthony Bourdain – the name in itself commands a sort of fear, respect and inspiration to most aspirational foodies world over, me included.  Bourdain has come to be known as one of the most celebrated chefs, critics and authors worldwide – someone who will make you cringe with his abusive, almost callous and cold critique of food (McDonalds’ chicken nuggets was by far the worst hit).

I have no reservations in saying he is the cherry on the cake of food programming. For one thing, he does not pretend to be an intellectual. Unpretentious, often downright uneducated about the country he visits; his reactions are honest, very human and frequently funny.  He takes his food as it comes. And his people too. He is no gourmet in this series and doesn't pretend to be, though he knows what tastes good and what he likes. He is not, never ever, condescending. His humour is self-deprecatory which is attractive as against Vir Sanghvi's self-congratulatory style (‘Rude Food’ is by fare one of the most obnoxiously bad food shows I’ve ever seen).

Bourdian can also write quite a mean cookbook, his most recent being - Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook. After making waves with his best-seller Kitchen Confidential, which looked at the goings on inside the kitchen from an outsider’s point of view, Bourdain’s new book is slightly more tempered - a trait that much reflects how the man himself has become after decades in the business.

Bourdain is a perennial outsider and that's why he is such an interesting and illuminating writer. Never feeling comfortable in the status quo, he is able to cast an inquisitory eye on the cult of celebrity that has come to be associated with cooking these days. Reflecting back on his upbringing, there is no trauma or suffering in his childhood. It seems a need for stimulation and excitement takes the young student into the world of haute cuisine and then into a descending spiral of drug and alcohol dependency. While Kitchen Confidential caught the angry young man, today Bourdain, the father of young girl, no longer cares to indulge the mortal dangers of being cool.

The alternative rebel and adult engage in a fierce debate throughout the book. He offers an admonitory chapter on the real seductions of becoming a chef. He describes the frightening challenges of running a profitable restaurant in economically difficult times. He rails against vegetarians like George Orwell once did, but in a far more furious way. The chapters that describe the suicidal man he was following a divorce, the addiction to hard drugs, are now replaced by the need to live for someone else. Now his concerns are mainstream. The shock at the way the meat industry delivers their product to our supermarkets and his careful counter programming of his daughter against the seductive marketing of McDonalds.

Yes, he is tamer, but don't be fooled: he is not by any means domesticated. Medium Raw is a fitting title for  the man whose love affair with food continues much as a protective, almost possessive lover who lives for his muse; but he does so now while coming to terms with his whoremongering and making peace with selling out to a food network. All this while his bark and bite remain clearly intact. Well done, indeed!