Rest in Peace Chef: Anthony Bourdain dead at 61.

As I write this I’m watching people share stories and thoughts on what is looking like an apparent suicide by Anthony Bourdain.

The one time chef and author/globetrotter was found dead by his friend Éric Ripert in France this morning apparently by his own hand.

Anyone who has even casually looked at this blog will know that I have been a constant fan of the man and his work. A previous girlfriend of mine used to call him my man crush and I suppose that assessment was true.

In fact this blog page is a direct result of my early ‘obsession with Bourdain’. When my girlfriend and I won a trip to New York one of the first things we did was go to eat at his old restaurant Les Halles where he had been head chef.

I can’t even begin to imagine what his ex wife and daughter are going through this morning and in all sincerity my heart goes out to them though all of this.

Bourdain has the distinction of being one of the original bad boy celebrity chefs along with Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay.

He used food as a bridge to explore different cultures. Sharing a meal and finding out what really makes the world tick. From high end dining with 3 star chefs to squatting in the sand with tribesmen in Namibia eating the less appealing parts of warthog.

He opened my mind to the world of exotic food. To the point where I will often try a new cuisine and just have the server bring me what they would want to eat.

Depression and suicide are very serious medical issues. One can never really know what demons a person is struggling with. What pain, guilt or shame they carry in their hearts. Real or imagined to the outside world those feelings are all too real to the person suffering.

Mental illness can be as debilitating as a broken bone or heart condition. But because that pain is invisible to everyone else it is misunderstood and marginalized by the outside world. I know this because I deal with depression and severe anxiety on a daily basis.

To all of Anthony’s family and friends I offer my sincere condolences. You do not grieve alone.

A carnivores idea of heaven: Carnaval Brazilian BBQ.

With Darlene’s birthday this past weekend we decided that we were due for a fine night out on the town for dinner.  It was just our luck that a the owners of Hermanos Argentinian Steakhouse opened a new South American themed restaurant just down the block Carnaval Brazilian BBQ.

                            

For Winnipeg the concept is quite revolutionary, for a fixed price of $39 per adult an endless buffet of savory meats and side dishes is brought to your table and sliced fresh from a skewer and onto your plate.  Simple in concept and frighteningly efficient in bringing one quickly to the point of entering a meat coma.  But oh so good.  Onetime chef and now author and globe-trotter Anthony Bourdain has said in the past that food and cooking is all about domination and submission.   The diner must be willing to submit to the will of the cooks and the severs to receive the best of what they have to offer.

Carnaval in this case is full on Fifty Shades of Meat, a cruel mistress who only cares about one thing, fulfilling your every dark prehistoric desire for incredibly tender, juicy and wonderfully marbled cuts of slower and tastier creatures than Yes please, I want more.

Our meal began quite simply,  the floor manager welcomed us to our table and instructed us on the workings of the table and the floor staff.  We were each given a coaster, one side printed green with a hungry diner smiling fork and knife at the ready.  This was to be displayed if we wanted the gauchos to bring food to our table.  The other side was printed in red, the diner passed out in blissful slumber as if to say “Please no more, I need a break.”

She also explained that family sized portions of side dishes would be brought throughout our meal to accompany the gaucho’s BBQ’d offerings.  Ready, steady, GO!  We cautiously flipped our cards to green, almost instantly a smiling gaucho appeared with a skewer packed top to bottom with roast chicken wings.  Yes, why yes of course I would like some my good man.  The wings were hardly off the skewer when a second gaucho appeared bearing pork chorizo sausage.  All so innocent luring me into their trap.

The wings were crispy and juicy to a fault I gnawed at the wingtips for the crispy goodness and devoured the chorizo with equal fervor.  More and more gaucho’s appeared, skewered chicken thighs, slices of heavenly rare top sirloin, sirloin cap so fatty and crispy and delicious on the outside and so incredibly tender and flavorful on the inside that my eyes rolled up into the back of my head with near  orgasmic delight.

One of the most outstanding wandering table side attractions turned out not to be food at all but a caipirinha trolley.  Where he mixed a very potent Brazilian staple beverage in honor of Darlene’s birthday.  Handing it to her, he whispered sip it slow it, it sneaks up on you.

Our table which was empty at the start of our meal was now packed with side dishes, condiments and the detritus of the meal.  Looking less and less like a fine dining experience but more like a frat party gone horribly wrong.  I had slipped into the dark side and was loving every finger licking, chin mopping crispy skinned and painful sigh as I tried to keep pace with the gauchos.

They looked less like friendly servers now, taking on the visage of black clad, sash wearing delivers of pleasure and pain.  My stomach pleaded with me to stop, full to bursting.  But my meat addled brain wanted more, more lamb, more cap of sirloin, a chicken wing yes please.

Then it appeared, the object to stop my protein psychosis.  A single slab of BBQ pineapple coated in cinnamon and grilled to perfection.  The simple combination of sweet and acid brought everything together. Something so simple almost mundane left me full and complete.

Overall the meal was delicious, however on my next visit I would do things a bit differently to ease into the meal.  Ordering a course of salad or starters from the complementary menu right of the bat seems the way to go.  We were pounded by meat right away and by the time our salads and bread had arrived we were already into full-fledged feeding mode.

This concept for Brazilian BBQ coupled with the quality and know how that the Hermanos ownership group brings to the table, I can’t see Carnaval being anything but a smash hit.

Bob’s Book Corner: Blood, Bones and Butter.

Finally a chance to sit down and write again for a little while, things have been a bit crazy here this last week and as such I missed my normal mid-week post.  I do apologize for that.   But on the happy side, spring is hurrying hard to get here and the melt is on.  I just hope it’s slow and steady, otherwise the flooding could get real nasty here this year.

As the title implies I have a small book review for everyone today.  Gabrielle Hamilton’s first major effort in the food writing genre.  Blood, Bones and Butter tells the tale of how she came to own a small highly regarded restaurant just outside the Bowery on Manhattans Lower East Side.

Blood, Bones and Butter.

Winnipeg Street Eats: A Bourdain Friendly Dog Hits Winnipeg.

Well another weekend is upon us here in Winnipeg.  This particular afternoon found myself and my significant other in search of something new and exciting.  Well we found that today in spades.

Dingo's Store Front

Winnipeg hospitality group WOW! has opened a new style hot dog  joint in Winnipeg’s Little Italy.  Dingo’s Wild and Crazy Dogs marks a departure for the group from fine upscale dining to upscale street food.  The concept diner features a dozen specialty quarter pound hot dogs on the menu, any of which could have lept directly from Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and onto my tray.

Under Construction

As many of you may have noticed, the frequency of my posting here has pretty much dropped off to nothing over the last week or so.  The reason for this unfortunately as I alluded to in my earlier post Wet is the fact that my writing space, our once finished basement, flooded pretty heavily during the downpour a few weeks ago.

What I am left with now is a gutted basement space that aggravates my allergies to no end if I spend more than a few passing minutes in quiet contemplation at the computer.

The good news however is that due to a number of factors our homeowners insurance is going to cover much of the damage.  Meaning that I should have a livable working space again sometime in the near future.

The other big change you surely will notice is the stylistic upgrades that I have made to the look of the page.  To be completely honest I was never really satisfied with the “Look” of the old pages, and was looking to change the design to better suit my personality.

However, as I have always said, EVERYTHING here is up for debate.  If you the readers don’t like this new look let me know.  Similarly if you really dig the way things look and how you access the material let me know that too.

So what have I been up to since my basement flooded? Well for one thing I have devoured books at an ever-increasing rate.  I am very close to finishing Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain.   Once again Tony, I feel, has managed to cut through a lot of the crap and deliver a straight forward if somewhat controversial look at his life since writing his breakthrough tell all book Kitchen Confidential.

Medium Raw

This time out his stories include partial, and apparently disputed, explanations to many of the questions that us that follow his career have asked.  Why he turned to drugs, the reasons for his breakup to his first wife Nancy Putkoski, and how the once bad boy chef of the food world has become whipped by his now 3-year-old daughter.

Those child rearing stories in particular left me speechless, vacillating between horror and laughter.  But all throughout left the impression, and rightly so, that the bad boy world touring cook has finally seen fit to be dragged out of his leather jacket and cowboy boots by the new light of his life.

His writing also serves to deepen my already sharp dislike of the Food Network.  I have personally held a similar distaste for the speciality channel for always catering to the lowest common denominator viewer.

Honestly, how many burger cook-offs and cake building shows does the average viewer need?  Take a show like Chopped for example, where the somewhat talented chefs are made to cook with an increasingly bizarre list of foods.  Yes I will admit that Top Chef,  seen in Canada on Bravo and strangely enough Food Network Canada, does have the odd out of place competition, the vending machine challenge springs to mind.  But to base an entire show out of adding novelty ingredients to your menu that’s a bit much even for me.

But I digress.  If you’re a fan of the cooking lifestyle and or of Anthony Bourdain in particular you will be very well served by picking up his new book Medium Raw.  In fact, if you’re so tempted, Catsworking has a most excellent chapter by chapter discussion group going that is most definitely worth checking out.

Till next time.

Bob