The first was a book - an author actually, but I discovered him through his autobiography, Kitchen Confidential by Chef Anthony Bourdain. I had heard that film director David Fincher and Brad Pitt, the team behind Fight Club, were planning on adapting his best-selling novel to the big-screen, and considering the fact that this was back when I was going through my whole "I hate the world and, hence, love Fight Club- phase, I raced down to the local bookstore and grabbed myself a copy, immediately devouring every word of it.
It was, in a word, amazing. It was, in a few words, one of the best novels I'd ever read, and, not to sound pretentious, but I've read a lot of great books in my time. It, essentially, chronicled the life of Bourdain, from his humble beginnings as a dishwasher in a grimy café, to his drug-filled early-20's as a sous-chef, and finally ending with his now-mature, father-like figure lifestyle that still sees him serving hundreds of customers each day in his New York restaurant.
It is, no doubt, obvious from the above paragraph that I was jealous at the writer's talents. His prose was intricately crafted, yet free flowing; he peppered his chapters with creative references to modern-day pop culture that (unlike anecdotes from a certain Salman Rushdie) the average reader could understand. To me, his rough-and-ready attitude made him a Jack Kerouac for the new millennium, a Hunter S. Thompson whose drug of choice was a well-cooked slab of meat rather than a sheet of blotted acid. In other words, he was the type of author that every writer aspires to be: on e who actually makes the reader interested in the source subject, no matter what it is. .
And anyone who could make an anorexic interested in food is, no doubt, a great writer. I became addicted. I read the book a second time, making sure to note down every dish he mentioned, and then tried them all. I went out and bought his follow-up, A Cook's Tour, and did the same thing.
