The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones

by Anthony Bourdain

Maybe we don't remember the name of whatever early pioneer of System D first gazed upon a snail in a moment of need and thought to himself, "Gee . . . maybe if I cram enough garlic butter in there, I can serve that!" But we're still eating escargots de Bourgogne, aren't we?

In fact, I know a number of accomplished chefs and sauciers who suffer from what we call "dishwasher syndrome," meaning that at every available moment between delicately spooning foamy sauces over pan-seared scallops and foie gras, or bullying waiters, they sneak over to the dish station and spend a few happy, carefree moments washing dishes.

Timothy Taylor's Stanley Park, a brilliant, if irritating, novel with a chef as hero. Taylor's protagonist breaks down the world of chefs into two camps: the Crips—transnationalists, for whom ingredients from faraway lands are an asset, people who cook without borders or limitations, constantly seeking innovative ways to combine the old with the new—and the Bloods, for whom terroir and a solid, rigorous connection to the immediate region and its seasons are an overriding concern.

"Does the product taste good?" should probably be the chef's primary concern. To insist, to demand, that all food be regional, seasonal, directly connected to time and place can—in the case of some of the more fervent advocates—invite the kind of return-to-the-soil thinking evocative of the Khmer Rouge.

In New Orleans, the last stop for bar-crawling cookies is the supremely squalid and at times terrifying Snake and Jake's Christmas Club Lounge,

Food tastes better without shoes, I have come to believe.

I had a fabulously greasy breakfast at the grim flophouse like Hummingbird Hotel and Grill.

ate sublime sno-cones at the legendary Hansen's Sno-Bliz Sweet Shop,

had the crawfish pie, pralines, and jambalaya at Tee-Eva's;

"Feed Me" red-sauce-heavy assault at Tony Angello's;

tweaked classics and gumbo variations and best-in-world fried chic...

ham hock with collards and grits a...

local beer and ate red beans and rice and listened to jazz and blues at Vaughn's, an anci...

and at a few bars, like Checkpoint Charlie's, you can wash the blood and hair from last night's misadventures off your clothes in the conveniently located on-premises launderette

I've confirmed my hypothesis about enjoying yourself in a new and unfamiliar town. First rule: Run away from the hotel, as far and as fast as you can. Rule Two: Avoid anyplace where people like you (meaning out-of-towners or tourists) congregate. Rule Three: When you find a crummy bar clogged with locals who seem to be enjoying themselves, go in, sit down, and start drinking.

rounds for your fellow drinkers. At the appropriate moment, inquire of the best places to eat, emphasizing your criteria to go where no tourists have gone before. "Where do you eat?" is a good starting point. If you hear the same name twice, take note.

For their own good, vegetarians should never be allowed near fine beers and ales. It will only make them loud and belligerent, and they lack the physical strength and aggressive nature to back up any drunken assertions.

"Look at it this way," suggests Another Famous Chef. "You can't be a great chef if the food is not consistent. You need a day off—and the food must, must be exactly the same when you are not there as it is when you are there. This is fundamental to the business. Even if you have only one restaurant. You are a leader. You create a team who executes your style. Your vision. It's the same when you start opening more places."

it's illustrative of the utter gutlessness and self-delusion of these yuppified, trustafarian true believers.

these people, assured Hezbollah-like of the righteousness of their cause, were capable of shame, then they surely should be ashamed.

Cooking professionally is a dominant act, at all times about control. Eating well, on the other hand, is about submission. It's about giving up all vestiges of control, about entrusting your fate entirely to someone else. It's about turning off the mean, manipulative, calculating, and shrewd person inside you, and slipping heedlessly into a new experience as if it were a warm bath.

Maybe it's a pheromonic thing. Like when you meet the love of your life for the first time, and she just, somehow, inexplicably smells and feels right. You sense that given the opportunity, this is the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with. I'm in town an hour, and I'm already tipsy, delighted, giggly, and elated.

When a proprietor or a server smiles proudly at you like that, when locals are clamoring to get at what they're selling, when your fellow diners' expressions mirror your own, you know that good food is on the way.

This goes against every modern chef's first instincts, conventional wisdom, and all our training. The natural urge, of course, is to always seek color contrast, that presentation be bold and eye-catching, that chefs at the very least "tweak" all that passes through their kitchens, no matter how classic the dish, essentially making it, with the addition or subtraction of the odd ingredient, somehow their own.

Or, as is thankfully still the case in isolated pockets in America, it can be the still-offered fare of an institution that for whatever reason has chosen to stay stuck in time and space, a fly in amber, unchanging—unaware, perhaps, or else afraid to change, or simply clinging to the old ways for the sake of an original clientele, one very likely dying of attrition. Look

R.W. Apple Jr. has referred to Singapore as "Disneyland with the death penalty," and for good reason. The list of things you can't do (spitting, littering, gum chewing, jaywalking) is as endless as it is hard

Chicken rice, by the way, in case you didn't know, is, basically, boiled chicken and white rice.

As I have found in my travels, a certain degree of dirtiness, lack of refrigeration, and close proximity to livestock is often a near-guarantee of something really good to eat.

If you see a crowd of locals lined up to eat at a filthy-looking little dunghole on the edge of town, it is often a sign of good things to come.

Blissed out on food, beer, and what had now become a warm and welcoming environment, I became suddenly nonconversational as I sucked, slurped, and dug at my crab.

She'd divorce him—go for full custody, of course—and the no-doubt wildly expensive lawyer she'd hire off the society pages would get it for her too. Easily. (On the basis of the regrettable "hostess incident" a while back.) She'd get half of what was left, after everybody else piled on. After the banks, the vendors, the credit card companies, the lawyers, accountants, the IRS, state, city, and marshals had finished stripping away what assets they could.

The cat was on the roof, Paul decided. She'd already made up her mind. A week, two weeks from now and she'd be giving notice. You can't bullshit her.

I'd met a lot of very hungry people in recent years, and I doubted very much whether they cared if their next meal came from the next village over or a greenhouse in Tacoma. The notion of "terroir" and "organic" started to seem like the kind of thinking you'd expect of the privileged—or isolationist. The very discussion of "organic" vs. "nonorganic," I knew, was a luxury. I've since come to believe that any overriding philosophy or worldview is the enemy of good eating.

First: Visit city on book tour. Inevitably, end up eating, bar-hopping, and getting trashed with all the local chefs. Second: Using all the valuable "insider" information accumulated during earlier book tour debauch, return to the same location to make a television show. Third: Using one's experiences during filming—and the handy production notes and videotape—write an article about the place for a magazine and get paid TWICE!

If you can't behave in a restaurant you can't be my friend. It's that simple. Bad behavior is for bars.