Kitchen Confidential: Spiceless

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Fox's Kitchen Confidential has no story and only glimmers of the sex-drugs-rock'n roll excess of the book, thanks partly to the severe limitations of a prime-time slot on a national network TV channel. Clearly, few people involved in the TV's storyline either read or understood the book, because ingredients critical to the book's success are missing from the show. The TV show lacks the day-to-day sweat and toil of the kitchen. There were supposed to be lots of knives and swearing, right? Instead, we behold rakish designer boys and breast-implanted girls who scamper about in a restaurant where sex is fast and easy. The boys and girls deliver their lines quickly and are well rehearsed, but the lines themselves are insubstantial. All the book's rawness seems to have boiled away into tasteless goo. It is spiceless -- there's not even salt and pepper, much less more exotic drugs. For a moment in last night's second episode, we got a glimpse of badness when some guests skipped out on an $18,000 bill, explored for all of three minutes because it was just an excuse for chef Jack to forgive sous chef Steven for stealing an espresso machine (or not, as we the audience know) and, more importantly, a lead into the big sexual reunion scene between Jack and an old flame which finishes out that episode. Why emasculate the book on Fox, when there are more permissive venues like HBO? All we viewers get to see is Fashion sex, while the book contains so much more. Of course, if you don't really read the book, it will be tough to mine the goodies therein. It would seem that the writers simply skipped chapter one "Food is Good" and went straight for the crowd-pleasing second chapter "Food is Sex." Most of the people involved in the making of this show don't seem to have read any further. Then again, how could they read any further, when the third chapter has the emotionally and intellectually daunting title of "Food is Pain"? One or two writers seem to have at least skimmed further, but the suits must have laid down the law when it came to the show's cuisine -- a demographic choice, of course. Despite the fact that the funnest, richest source of content and flavor vis-a-vis any of the restaurant owners in the book is "Bigfoot," the suits probably insisted on restaurant-owner Pino Luongo because of the cuisine his restaurant represents -- more Americans have tasted Italian food than French (Fine Dinining or not). Granted, Frank Langella is wonderful in comedy and should be welcome in any film or television show (superchefblog's pick: True Identity 1991), but it is still an embarrassment to see Italian as the cuisine after reading this passage: How did I, a chef with limited Italian experience in my background, a guy who up to now had sneered at Italian food, had even written a book about a young Italian-American chef, who always wanted nothing more than to get away from the red sauce and garlic and parmesan cheese of his childhood and cook French, and was willing, ultimately, to betray his own family rather than cook fried calamari -- how did I end up as the opening chef of Pino Luongo's newest, high-profile Tuscan adventure? (p. 163) Clearly, everyone involved went braindead when it came to kitchen staffing: where are the Latinos? Guys named Seth, Teddy, Jim, and Steven work in that kitchen? Try Seve, Tadeo, Jaime, and Stefano! If the show is in New York, whose all white male kitchen is this supposed to be? Or did Latinos (and Asians and African-Americans) flee the scene? Forget Kitchen Confidential: did anyone at Fox ever read Fast Food Nation? (You would think a title like that would grab Fox's attention.) Seriously, was there one single word of Spanish uttered, much less shouted? Kitchen Confidential could have been a break-through, bi-lingual show! A restaurant kitchen might have been the best stage to break the fact that Latinos are now the backbone of American restaurant dining, right there, on prime-time television. Instead, we are served milquetoast. Let's dig deeper: on another level, the TV series takes no inside look at restaurants (which NBC's The Restaurant tried harder to do -- and failed). There is no individual, confessional tone: something more along the lines of Ally McBeal would have worked better (and was a hit for Fox, too). Part of the book Kitchen Confidential is about Bourdain's simply surviving his own self-destructiveness, accepting that in some respects "I suck" (p. xv), accepting that a major part of his success is not necessarily his own craftsmanship with the knife but with the pen. There is real irony involved in his evolution from chef-wastrel to chef-writer, from his expert details on knives to his constant confessions of self-indulgent machismo. Lastly, like other recent food shows, there is little interest in the actual preparation of food. It's all glamour, baby. It is unlikely that this season will include chapter elements on "Who Cooks?" in the kitchen (pp. 55-63), or "How Food Gets From Our Kitchen to Your Table" (pp. 64-74), or "How to Cook Like the Pros" (pp. 75-83). On the 2000 Ecco Press paperback edition, the top blurb (New York Daily News) calls Kitchen Confidential "Funny, Irreverent, Scandalous." This TV show isn't any of that. It is devoid of "equal parts wit and wickedness," which Restaurant Business attributes to the book. That said, it is more savageable then NBC's The Restaurant or Emeril. Were Fox willing, plot and character, to the extent that they exist now, could be changed (well, "added"). The TV show could aspire to raw edginess, restaurant exploration, and personal confession. Granted, names like Sex and the City's producer Darren Star and those of many of the show's stars like Bradley Cooper will carry the show for a while. Also, worse rival TV shows will shore up confidence in Kitchen Confidentials among ratings-hungry suits. Still, this turkey needs some more substantial wings if it is going to fly for a whole season. Otherwise, the only only Latino phrase likely to become popular from this show will have to be borrowed from gubernator Arnold Schwarzenegger: hasta la vista, baby. Still, one doubts that Anthony Bourdain minds too much. After reading his book, one would almost expects epithets like "food whore" might be even welcome or certainly sloughed off -- particularly if flung at such a hard-bitten writer. For the 2000 edition, Bourdain wrote: This book was a nice-size score for me, after a long life living hand-to-mouth, bouncing around from restaurant to restaurant, hustling a living, any hopes of attaining the peaks of Culinary Olympus long abandoned. (p. xvi) Surely, Fox is sending Bourdain over to the bank again, laughing all the way, and this time with an even nicer-size score for the TV rights -- and, for those who read but had not actually read it before, more books sales for Kitchen Confidential, which is clearly advertised on the front page of the TV show website. And perhaps Fox was banking that in fact most people in America don't read "books" (whatever they are) and thus would not be disappointed. So, if you have not read Kitchen Confidential, perhaps you won't mind the show. You might even like it. Still, superchefblog recommends that you get yourself a copy of Kitchen Confidential and invest your time in reading the book, instead. If you have to watch TV on Monday night, we recommend Bob Dylan: No Direction Home on PBS while it lasts. News stories: Slate Entertainment Weekly Hollywood Reporter Boston Globe Chicago Sun-Times New York Daily News Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel New York Times New York Magazine Previous articles: Will Write for Food: Dianne Jacob Robert Klein: The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue Valentine's Knives: Cut to the Heart The White House: Think Like a Chef Real TV Cooking? Kitchen Confidential a la Sex and the City Rocco DiSpirito: Ridiculed in the Rainbow Room [complete Food Television coverage] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, television --> back to superchefblog