Name: Anthony Bourdain Reveals The Truth About Rats In Restaurants | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-09-27T15:00:45.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Anthony Bourdain Reveals The Truth About Rats In Restaurants | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-09-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Anthony Bourdain Reveals The Truth About Rats In Restaurants | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-09-27. Transcript available.

our next guest is the executive chef of new york's brasserie lazal and the
author of this
best-selling memoir of his life in the restaurant business entitled kitchen
confidential here's anthony bourdain welcome to the program happy to be here i
can't tell you how
much i enjoyed this book it was fascinating stuff it seems like a great wild
exciting colorful life
being a chef being a cook working in restaurants and stuff the child's dream of
running a pirate
crew yeah now um you used to run a restaurant i had a restaurant right next
door to this theater
right yeah it was called it was called sullivan's and and you were hoping to
cash in on that ed
sullivan mania what was the deal because everybody thought well great this is
nice we have a nice
restaurant here but what happened to that yeah what a concept an ed sullivan
theme restaurant maybe maybe
that wasn't such a good idea but i mean it wasn't really a theme restaurant was
it uh yeah i i guess
i really we never figured it out was it a nightclub or a restaurant i mean ed
sullivan is not the first
name that comes to mind you know rollicking good time and a good meal yeah uh
how long was that in
business uh i think about two years yeah let's uh let's talk about where uh
tell me the story from
the book about the time that you first had an oyster you're a kid you're in france
with your family yeah
i was uh bouncing around france with my family actually they were dragging me
around i was not happy to
be there i was complaining you know the butter tastes cheesy this milk is
strange i hate this food
um and we were invited out on an oyster boat with with a neighbor and uh who
suddenly reached into
the water and pulled one out crack one open i saw my whole family kind of
recoil in horror and i think
largely because i realized this is a real opportunity to shock and horrify my
family i'm going to give
it a shot right and it was great so you as a kid you just really loved it yeah
yeah so that was the
beginning that a little light went off and you said maybe i have a life in food
food has power to you know
create an impression and then you spent uh a lot of time i don't know a lot of
time some summers working
at a uh like a resort restaurant up in cape cod is that right yeah one of those
places you know you've
been there someplace like at a you know ramshackle seafood restaurant fried
clams fried shrimp you know
french fries uh diet you know light cooking and you know i was a dishwasher and
uh just a summer job
and i looked over at the cooks and these guys they dressed like pirates they
carried big badass knives
they stole everything in sight they drank for free they had these incredibly
prolific social lives
shall we say uh sure that looked good to me yeah
there's also another another moment i think when you're working at one of these
places when you
had injured yourself uh working for a meal and you asked a guy if there was
like a first aid kit or do
you have any ointment or bacitracin lotion or something right yeah that's
something you don't do in
restaurants i mean i it was my first real job as a cook i thought i was hot
stuff i'd worked a little
bit in this knucklehead restaurant and i went into a restaurant where they
really knew what they were
doing it was very busy and i was in the weeds as we say just terribly behind
and i i burned myself on
a hot sizzle platter one of the things they put under the broiler and i turned
to the guy next to me
and said you know do you have a band-aid and you know it's just the worst
moment everybody the whole
kitchen went quiet and the guy says to me oh you know you want a band-aid
reaches under grabs a
sizzle bladder bare hands puts it down in front of me looking in my eyes the
whole time i just you
know slunk home and you know now there was uh uh let's talk about eating in
restaurants in new york
city we just were like knee deep in rats now are are there rats are there rats
in restaurants in new
york city not my restaurant yeah there are i worked in a mexican place years
ago where they they used to
drag with they'd drag avocado pits and chicken bones up in the ceiling and you'd
be working and suddenly
the ceiling would crumble and and you know chicken bones and from the rats they
brought it up down
they'd come scurrying across your feet i had one they'd eat poison curl up on
my shoes in the kitchen
horrible are they that prevalent not that now is is it possible to have a sanitary
kitchen and also
have rodents in it uh you know what i mean can you cook reasonable meals and
still have mice and rats
and stuff if you save them for stock yeah you know there's uh uh when comedians
get together they they
love nothing more than to talk about times that they have bombed when they've
gone out and for an
hour got no laughs is is it the same with cooks and chefs do you get together
and talk about meals that
you really screwed up um we're all control freaks we've all had at least one
probably more really
terrible nights like that and i think our whole lives are constructed in such a
way as to avoid any
possibility of that happening i had one new year's eve at a big nightclub years
ago that you know people
had ordered at 9 30 at night were walking in the kitchen around 12 30 walking
themselves in the
kitchen looking behind the line and saying is that my appetizer the waiters
were hiding in the kitchen
when the kitchen's quiet you know you're in trouble now if if there is like a
wise guy eating in your
restaurant do you like touch his food and lick the plate and that kind of thing
not a good idea
no we give them what what they want and quickly there's a very funny story in
here and and my
impression from this is that people in your profession go from one job one
restaurant to another job to
another restaurant and just make a big swing and a circle through the the city
and then back again and
they keep doing it over and over again and you you go to an interview and it's
like a steakhouse
and and things are going pretty pretty good and finally uh the owner of the
steakhouse asks you
one question and you'd think well geez how exactly do i answer this and screwed
up the whole thing do
you know what that is yeah the guy had a very thick scottish brogue and i
desperately needed this job and
i was doing so well in the interview and he says well what do you know about me
and i i'm trying to
figure out what does he want me to say you know i said i decided to be honest
next to nothing i said right
right right you know suddenly the interview's over i'm on my way out the door i
thought what did i do
wrong and i realized you know he runs a steakhouse and what he really asked is
you know what do you
know about meat
not much very little about about what about meat no nothing really that was a
hamburger or two that's
it yeah uh what do you think about these guys like emerald lagasse and those
guys on the food network
well you're asking me to you know kick santa claus in the crotch on television
i mean
everybody loves the guy pay money to see that uh me too um a nice guy who runs
great restaurants
i find the show excruciating most chefs i know we see it we want to jump out
the window uh and what
about what about also like the iron chef that kind of thing i don't understand
it but it's cool yeah it
is exciting now if if uh if i would come to your restaurant tonight uh or
anybody comes to your
restaurant tonight and people do come to your restaurant uh who who's cooking
their food are you
cooking their food uh not lately no uh i think that you got a guy who does it i
have a lot of guys
to do it uh i i think the idea from television people get the idea that that
the people cooking
your food are wear starch white jackets they uh speak well they're adorable and
cuddly like emerald
in fact they're more like a mexican prison gang
you asked well bon appetit
uh it's a fascinating book it's doing well too isn't it yeah yeah nice job
kitchen confidential ladies and
gentlemen thank you very much for being here nice to have you with us anthony bourdain