Tony – Diary of a Young Chef

We were familiar with Anthony Bourdain’s first and highly gossipy book, "Kitchen Confidential". It was the sort of stuff that would put you off ever going to a restaurant again: filth reigned supreme, the chefs were quarrelsome and smug – not to mention vain, each convinced they were the best, in spite of the strict hierarchy in the kitchen (which we’ve learnt once and for all from watching Ratatouille). Tony recounts the summer of 1970, when the future culinary star told his family he’d won a scholarship to a residential writing school. It was a – shall we say – “personal” conviction; none of it was true. He ended up penniless in the seaside town of Provincetown, Massachusetts – all around us we see posters for the film Jaws. He ended up there following a girl he fancied. He went to work as a dishwasher at Antonio Banderas’s restaurant, where Leo Woodhall, another wayward young man, was already working. Tony is woken up every morning with a bucket of water, as is only fitting for someone who went to bed soaking wet from drink. Sadly, we know the tragic end that befell Anthony Bourdain, who took his own life in 2018 during a bout of depression. We know how it will end, and it seems that chef Banderas knows it too; he tells Tony about Vatel, Louis XIV’s chef, who took his own life because the fish bought for the royal banquet hadn’t arrived on time. Dominic Sessa is perfect in the role; we’d already admired him in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers.