Dining Out

Libby Dulski

10/8/16
Reading Response #6

Secret Ingredients

            I regret to say that the first few chapters of the Dining Out section in Secret Ingredients hardly captured my attention. However, the last forty pages redeemed the reading as the final chapters where entertaining. Between Adam Gopnik’s chapter “Is There a Crisis in French Cooking?” and Anthony Bourdain’s chapter “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” they more than made up with my lack of interesting from the first few chapters that I read.  

            I liked Gopnik’s piece because he talks about why people enjoy Paris. He says that people “love [Paris] because the first time they came they ate something better than they had ever eaten before, and kept coming back to eat it again.” I have been to Paris twice. One of the many things that have been forever cemented in my brain from my two trips to Paris has got to be the food. I had escargot for the first time I visited Paris. I was so skeptical, thinking to myself why the hell would I eat snails; they sit on the bottom of the ocean for goodness’ sake. Regardless to say, I ate the slimy, gooey creatures. They were in a buttery and creamy pesto-like sauce and still in their shell. It was the best meal that I had in France. Throughout my visits to France, Paris specifically, I have ended up eating escargot at least ten times. So, I agree with Gopnik, I love Paris for the food.

            Like in A Cook’s Tour, Bourdain’s signature voice was easily heard in his chapter “Don’t Eat Before Reading This.” This chapter was almost eye-opening to readers as Bourdain shows us what really goes on in a kitchen. One part that I found particularly disturbing but at the same time entertaining was when he describes what kitchens do with pieces of meat for people who want a well-done burger. He describes that, “When one of the cooks finds a particularly unlovely piece of steak- tough, riddled with nerve and connective tissue, off the hip end of the loin, and maybe a little stinky from age” (85) the chief will have a couple options as to what to do with the nasty meat. He could throw it in the trash, or he can serve it. Bourdain describes that kitchens might serve it to someone who gets their meat cooked well-done: “The way he figures it, the philistine who orders his food well-done is not likely to notice the difference between food and flotsam” (85). He also talks about how restaurants reuse bread. Yet reusing bread was not even the most disgusting part because restaurants might even recycle butter for hollandaise, which makes me gag thinking about it. Bourdain’s chapter, has his signature human, self-effacing voice and his passages about what really happens in kitchens is his way of shortening the distance between him and the reader. If he is able to critique the food industry he is a professional in, the reader is more likely to trust him and listen to him more willingly and take his words with value.