Tony – Diary of a Young Chef

We were familiar with Anthony Bourdain’s first, highly gossipy book, "Kitchen Confidential". It was the sort of thing 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 rigid hierarchy in the kitchen (something we’ve learnt for life 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 in 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 right for someone who went to bed absolutely plastered. 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 the story of Vatel, Louis XIV’s chef, who took his own life because the fish bought for the royal banquet had not arrived on time. Dominic Sessa is perfect in the role; we had already admired him in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers.