Interview

In a break from our usual Q&A format, Chef Anthony Bourdain talks about Gabrielle Hamilton and reviews her memoir Blood, Bones & Butter.

The Best There Is by Anthony Bourdain

Very quickly after meeting Gabrielle Hamilton, I understood why she was a terrific and much admired chef. I knew that her restaurant, Prune, was groundbreaking, that she seemed to have come out of nowhere, instead of being a product of the "system" (she'd emerged from the invisible subculture of catering), to open one of the most quirky, totally uncompromising, and quickly embraced restaurants in New York City. Her purportedly (but not really) Franco-phobic menus were intensely, notoriously personal, her early embrace of the nose to tail attitude was way, way ahead the times, and chefs - all chefs - seemed to like and respect her. Almost as quickly, it became apparent that this chef could write.

Short pieces appeared here and there over the years and they were sharp, funny, incisive, unsparing of both author and subjects - straight to the point and pretense-free, like Hamilton herself. She could write really well. And she had, from all accounts, a story to tell. So when it was announced that Blood, ...