Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain: book review

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook (2010) is part memoir and part culinary history.

The celebrity chef, Anthony Bourdain, begins with a collection of top chefs, mainly French, all in the same room. He wonders how he fits in, but it sets him on a quest to find the answer to ‘Why cook well?’

He writes nineteen short chapters about travelling around the world, eating, and drinking to discover the answer.

He starts with his New York background, and he mentions all the top chefs—Gordon Ramsey, Marco Pierre White, David Chang, Jamie Oliver, Jim Harrison, Thomas Keller—and the famous and interesting people he has cooked for—and places he has dined in. He writes of restaurants at their peaks and their down times, and why restaurants close.

He writes about meat, and trends, organic food, the creative process, slow cooking, and personal style—all the while, going back and forth between the past and the present. The comparisons are interesting.

With blunt, colloquial, simple language, he writes as he speaks, with little editing of his thoughts and words. Like a multi-course meal, there are good bits, there are better bits, and there are ‘why is this here?’ bits.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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