Anthony Bourdain

Fortunately, my purveyors know me as a dangerously unstable and profane rat-bastard, so if I don’t like what I receive, they know I’ll be on the phone later, screaming at them to come and ‘pick this shit up

Doogie, you syphilitic, whitebread, mayonnaise-eating, John Tesh-ass wannabe – next time you slip a special order in without checking with me first? Me and Carlos gonna punch two holes in your neck and bump dicks in the middle!’

What kind of glue-sniffing, crackhead mesomorphs you got working for you

By now, my stomach is a roiling hell broth of suppressed frustration, nervous energy, caffeine and alcohol

Steven, my sous-chef from 1993 until recently – when he finally took on a kitchen of his own – was my evil twin, my doppelgänger, my director of clandestine services, a Bilko-esque character who, in addition to the usual sous-chef responsibilities such as running the kitchen in my absence, line cooking at a high level and watching my back, was invaluable to me for his remarkable ability to get things done

When management finally got wind of the fact that Jimmy was getting paid for not working at the Supper Club, I was made the chef. Unfortunately, Steven had already carved out his own invisible empire within my own.

It made things difficult.

The boy could cook, though.

And this … this, dear reader, is my closest and most trusted friend and associate

My friend’ famously means ‘asshole’ in the worst and most sincere sense of that word

My vato locos are, like most line cooks, practitioners of that centuries-old oral tradition in which we – all of us – try to find new and amusing ways to talk about dick

But what the system seeks, what it requires, is someone, anyone, who can hold up their station, play the game without getting bent out of shape and taking things personally