The simple elegance of fondant potatoes
In 1999, a relatively unknown American chef wrote an essay in the New Yorker uncovering the secrets of restaurants. ‘Don’t Eat Before Reading This’ lifted the lid on both the underworld of professional kitchens and the mentality of chefs. In it, the writer meticulously took down ordering fish on a Monday (old), eating steak well done (for ‘philistines’), brunch as a concept (despised) and vegetarians in general (‘Enemies of everything that’s good and decent in the human spirit’). The no-punches-pulled writing, which was both lyrical and graphic as well as funny and forthright, was the first published essay by Anthony Bourdain, who would go on to become one of the
