In 1998, an out-of-work chef named Anthony Bourdain applied for a job to helm the kitchen of La Brasserie Les Halles in New York City. The interview went well. But the sad-looking surroundings of the empty post-lunch dining room— nicotine-stained and wine-splattered walls and ceilings, chairs and bar stools “reflecting years of neglect and abuse” — gave him the feeling the place was doomed for failure.
He told his wife he wouldn’t take the job. But being broke, she insisted that they at least accept chef-partner Jose de Meirelles’s offer of a complimentary meal.
A few nights later, crammed among loud, jovial customers and dining on fatty rillettes, roast pork loin with prunes, and other old-school favorites reminiscent of Bourdain’s childhood summers in France, “something clicked.” He took the job and never looked back.
Bourdain tells this story with the charming irreverence that made him famous in the 20th Edition of “Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking” (Bloomsbury, $40), written with Meirelles and his business partner Philip Lajaunie. Any fan of Bourdain’s bestselling tell-all of the restaurant industry, “Kitchen Confidential,” or his Emmy Award-winning culinary travel programs that continue to air six years after his death, will understand how Les Halles’s unpretentious, carnivore-friendly style won him over.
He prefaces a recipe for Les Halles’s signature tripe by likening its smell while cooking to a “wet sheepdog, " insisting that “those who don’t run screaming from the room — or frantically calling out to Domino’s — might well have a revelatory experience.”
I’ll never know. But I can say, without reservation, his version of coq au vin, the classic wine-braised chicken stew, lives up to his lofty description: “durable, delicious, and the perfect illustration of the principles of turning something big and tough and unlovely into something truly wonderful.”
And with each gentle nudge along the way to tidy up as I go and take a break for a sip of wine now and again, I am reminded of how his own enduring, delicious, illustrative recipes are, themselves, wonderful.
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
Sign up for the AJC Food and Dining Newsletter
Read more stories like this by liking Atlanta Restaurant Scene on Facebook, following @ATLDiningNews on X and @ajcdining on Instagram.
About the Author
