Joseph Thompson wrote this review.
Few things in this world highlight humanity’s truculence like the feast of Ortolan. This small bunting, force fed through manipulations of its diurnal cycle and then drowned in Armagnac, is eaten whole. With a cloth hiding their heads from the eyes of God, diners insert these innocent birds into their mouths decapitating them with a single bite that releases a flood of sizzling hot fat.
Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook opens with Anthony Bourdain’s near mythic recounting of a clandestine meal of these birds. The description is pornographic, revolting, mouth-watering, and enviable. In other words, Bourdain opens his memoir with the perfect metaphor for his book, his life, and his personality.
While crassly dropping names and telling foodie stories with an amazing braggadocio, Bourdain’s memoir reveals him to be much more than a superstar chef with a hit show. At heart he is a satirist, whose life requires no exaggeration to act as a mirror to society. Bourdain skewers the foibles of the culinary world with William Thackeray’s surgical precision.
It’s impossible not to smile as Bourdain praises and mocks chefs like Jamie Oliver in the same sentence. His wit contains more acid than anything Thackeray put into his book of snobs. But it also contains something intriguing. Inasmuch as he pokes at his colleagues, Bourdain saves the most astringent criticism for the most important person in his life after his daughter: himself. His vinegar words contain all the complex flavors of a fine wine due to his honest introspection.
Fans of No Reservations, a dessert of a show, will find Medium Raw an absolute feast.
(Ecco, 2010)
