Kitchen Confidential

I’m currently reading Anthony Bourdain’s "Kitchen Confidential", which was recommended to me (thanks, Mike!). This is not your usual autobiography of a chef – this is a combination of a ride on the Ghost train crossed with a roller coaster through Hell. Simultaneously both laugh-out loud funny and a peer over the edge into the Abyss. Highly recommended.

I am prompted to write this in part because Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant The Fat Duck in Bray has just been voted the best restaurant in the world by 500 experts around the world for Restaurant magazine. There is no doubt that Blumenthal is a culinary innovator, but I sometimes think that the line between worthwhile innovation and schlock shock is a thin one. It’s interesting that these same experts put the El Bulli restaurant in Spain at number two, a restaurant which according to a food-writer friend of mine, is simply a case of "the Emperor’s New Clothes".

Oh well, only a complete of weeks to go before Martin and I make another pilgrimage to a restaurant that I know will deliver: Can Fabes.