A more mellow Bourdain

<p>Anthony Bourdain, the bad-boy chef who snorted his way through a so-so cooking career before writing a snarky, no-holds-barred, best-selling memoir, “Kitchen Confidential,” in 2000, has a confession to make.</p><p>At age 53, the chef turned author turned TV host of the Travel Channel's “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations,” has started to soften like a slow-cooked pork shoulder.</p><p>“I'm less angry since I became a father,” he confides in a phone interview from his home in New York City, which he shares with his wife, Ottavia Busia, and their 2-year-old daughter, Ariane. “I'm loving it ... it's the best thing that ever happened to me.”</p><p>To demonstrate his new attitude, the food culture critic lightly spoofed Sonoma County's own celebrity chef and Food Network star, Guy Fieri, of the bleached hair and backward sunglasses fame.</p><p>“I would have started to bleed from my eyeballs a few years ago. ... I would have seen him as the nexus of evil,” Bourdain said. “Now, I look at a guy like that, and I say OK, it hurts to look at it, but that's a hard-working family man ...I have a grudging respect for the guy.”</p><p>With season six of his own TV show set to air this month and a new book (“Medium Raw”) coming out this spring, Bourdain will swing by the Copperfield's Books Renowned Speaker Series at 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa.</p><p>Bourdain, who writes for the New York Times, the New Yorker and other national magazines, plans to riff off a few of his favorite subjects during the Q&A session.</p><p>“Whatever I'm passionate about that day,” he said. “And whatever pissed me off.”</p><p>Here are Bourdain's views on a few timely topics, from the rise of street food to the empowerment of chefs and the new food trends.</p><p><b>Q: </b>What were your favorite childhood foods, growing up in New Jersey?</p><p><b>A: </b>As a kid, I was like any other suburban kid. I liked my mom's meatloaf, a good trashy hamburger, hot dog and French fries, and thick shakes at Carvel. And I'm sentimental about steamer clams, because it meant summer and vacation.</p><p><b>Q: </b>That was during the reign of Betty Crocker and Kraft. What inspired you to cook?</p><p><b>A:</b> It was also the time of Julia Child. That book was on the top of our refrigerator. ... If we had company over, my mother would hit that book, and she had a small repertoire of French dishes that she made pretty damn well. And those smells and flavors made an impression.</p><p><b>Q: </b>How did you get lured into the food services industry?</p><p><b>A: </b>Cooking well really snuck up on me — I got into this for all the wrong reasons. Immediate gratification, money, ego, free food, sex.</p><p>I was not knowingly passionate about food until well after I was in the restaurant business. It was an outlaw profession when I started. It was like running away with the circus. It was a subculture that I felt comfortable in and a discipline that I respected. It was a means of rebellion as well.</p><p><b>Q: </b>How did your book, “Kitchen Confidential” — a hilarious chronicle of the dark underbelly of the culinary world — change your life?</p><p><b>A: </b>I was standing on my feet 14 hours a day when I wrote the book. And not long after, I was on the bestseller list, and it took me a while to realize I might make a living not cooking someday.</p><p>I was 44, in the middle of a not-so-distinguished career, so it was good timing. I think a lot of people fall into the restaurant business because no one else would have them. ... That dynamic has really, really changed over the last 10 years or so. It's become a prestige position.</p><p><b>Q: </b>How did you manage the transition from chef to best-selling author?</p><p><b>A: </b>I've always been a really voracious reader, and I always read very, very quickly and a lot. I always used language for purposes of manipulation, but I really wasn't writing much before that. I hadn't been slogging away trying to write the great American novel.</p><p><b>Q:</b> Because of that book, you now get to eat and drink your way all over the world with a camera crew. Don't other chefs get a bit jealous?</p><p><b>A: </b>I'm milking it for everything I can. It's led directly to all my dreams coming true. Who gets to do what I do — travel where I want with friends and make undisciplined and wildly creative and self-indulgent decisions? I'm having a lot of fun. I'm well aware that I have the best job in the world.</p><p><b>Q: </b>What has changed in the world of food since you wrote your first book back in 2000?</p><p><b>A: </b>Chefs are empowered now and continue to be empowered. ... Your average chef is enjoying a degree of trust, and that's a big change. Because of shows like “Top Chef,” I think chefs everywhere are going to live a little bit better, and be more self-actualized, and more likely to serve food that they will actually enjoy themselves.</p><p>Look at how menus have changed today and how personal they are, compared to the conventional wisdom that we used to have to adhere to. There was so little room to be creative 20 years ago. You had to have a mixed green salad, a Caesar salad, a roast chicken, a salmon, and a sirloin. There was nowhere to make your mark.</p><p><b>Q:</b> In “No Reservations,” you champion global street food, including all the nasty bits and local delicacies. What do you think of the street food revolution in the U.S.?</p><p><b>A: </b>That's surely a good thing. We need a lot more, and we need a lot of change to bring us up to where we could be. There's no excuse for New York to not have what Singapore or Hong Kong has. ... A melting pot like New York should have one of the most dynamic street food scenes in the world, and it's inexplicable that we don't. But we're nibbling away at it. Good stuff is happening. ... But one-dish operations out of stalls — 30 in one big parking lot — that's what I'd like to see.</p><p><b>Q: </b>What kind of new thrills can viewers expect from this season of “No Reservations”?</p><p><b>A: </b>We're trying to get whatever worked last week and we're trying to not do that. ... We're always looking to top our previous outrages.</p><p>We're doing a Rome show entirely in black and white, and we're all being dubbed and subtitled. ... We're looking at the early Antonioni and Fellini films, and it will be gorgeous. My camera people promised me that they can make hot-looking food porn in black and white.</p><p><b>Q: </b>How do you see the future of food, from the perspective of a global eater?</p><p><b>A: </b>Street food fits in nicely with what's happened economically. At the end of 2008, there was a lot of changes. There's some kind of new dynamic as far as what people are looking for and what people are going to have to do in the future. People are concerned about where food comes from — and they're certainly more aware of how much it costs, what they're willing to pay for and what they're not willing to pay for. The kind of service and environment in a restaurant is really going to change.</p><p>David Chang (owner of Momofuku in New York) suggested that the entire ratio of protein to starch and vegetable has to change to more of an Asian model. So the meat is the flavoring agent.</p><p>It might be our salvation, given the shape our country is in.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Diane Peterson at 521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com.</p>