Kitchen Confidential

I am now halfway through reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. Never heard of the guy? He is the host of No Reservations on The Travel Channel. Anyways, this book is the funniest thing I've read in awhile. The most important chapter is called From Our Kitchen to Your Table, which outlines the do's and don'ts of ordering in a restaurant.

As a service to humanity, I will summarize it into the following bullet points:

• Never buy cheap sushi. (For the record, though, nobody loves Sushi Express more than I do. Yet nothing bad has ever happened to me after chowing down 8 plates of that stuff in one sitting).
• Never order fish on Monday. Most likely, they are leftovers from the stock delivered on Friday morning.
• Never order mussels. A single bad little guy out of a hundred good ones will send you crawling to the bathroom and pray for God's mercy, even if you are an atheist.
• Never order any steak well done, because they will give you the crappiest piece of meat in the fridge.
• If you are a vegetarian, don't bother going to a restaurant, because the chef will be delighted to sell you a plate of zuchini salad for $14.
• If the restaurant doesn't look busy, don't order shrimp. High turnover is the key to freshness.
• Sunday brunch is for losers, because most likely the real chef is taking the day off, and it's the 2nd string cooks who are preparing the food.
• Never order anything with hollandaise sauce (I don't even know what this is), cuz it's a hotbed of bacterial growth.
• Don't eat in a restaurant that has a filthy bathroom. Bathrooms are easy to clean; kitchens are not. So the logic goes, if the they are doing a poor job with easy-to-clean stuff, imagine what it is like in the kitchen.
• Think twice about ordering swordfish. It attracts parasitic worms like you-know-what attracts flies.
• Pork is preferable over poultry, cuz chickens are usually loaded with salmonella (except those spendy free range birds).
• Tuesday through Saturday are good for fine dining. Tuesday is the best, cuz the food is fresh, and the chef is well rested.
• Be polite to your waiter, because he could save yourself life by stopping you from ordering food that is dangerous for you.