Les Halles serves up wild boar and a taste of Anthony Bourdain
I ate wild boar and fabulous French fries last week in Les Halles, a Manhattan restaurant made famous by its former chef, Anthony Bourdain.
Tonight, I’ll hear Bourdain speak at the Auditorium Theatre. Bourdain has been, by far, the most interesting aspect of the celebrity-chef phenomenon that has led to TV networks, and zillions of books and public appearances.
He’s the entertaining rebel of the food world, as well as an irreverent guide through cultures and subcultures all over the world; a guy who sees the value in street food and the honest eats of the working classes of every nation, but who continues to value the artistry of gourmet cooking. On Bourdain’s No Reservations TV show, you expect the unexpected, laugh at the caustic humor and appreciate surprising insight and inspiration.
I share Bourdain’s love of all things pig (though not the Ramones).
He’s also a fascinating guy with his own stories of rising above all sorts of challenges — from early drug and booze use to the challenges of work in hot, crowded kitchens. He’s written well on those topics and many more — I especially recommend No Reservations, Bourdain’s landmark work on the ins and outs of restaurant kitchens that’s part memoir and part exposé, as well as its rambunctious sequel, The Nasty Bits.
In the latter book, he contemplates what it would mean if his TV and book celebrity ever collapsed, sending him back to the kitchen.
“Cooking is noble toil. And fun. No supermodel or television producer is ever going to say anything more interesting than my line cooks and sous-chefs. In the end it comes down to the very first question you ask yourself when enduring the hazing and drudgery of your first cook’s job … when you look long and hard in that mirror and say, ‘Do I really want to be a chef?’
“If you’d rather be an actor, or a spokesmodel — or even a writer — it’s time to get out.”
COVER ART. Two different events on a just-concluded vacation in Barcelona brought home something I’ve always believed — one of the best ways to see the talent, style and technique of an artist is to see how they handle a “cover.” One was the painter Pablo Picasso, the other was a jazz quintet headed by 80-year-old drummer Jimmy Cobb.
A cover is a musical term. It refers to those times when a musician performs his version of songs already made famous by other artists.
Examples are myriad: The Beatles performing “Long Tall Sally” or “Please Mr. Postman.” The Stones doing Chuck Berry’s “Oh Carol.” The Black Crowes singing Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle.” The concept is really fascinating when cultures or genres are crossed — like Toots doing a reggae version of “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
Why are covers a particularly good way to hear and see an artist? Because they give the observer a touchstone. If you know the song, you can better follow or become intrigued by the new interpretation. Sure, it says something about the original artist, but it also says something about the newer interpreter.
The cover concept came to mind twice during our Spanish vacation. First, my wife and I were fortunate to catch a key night of the Barcelona Jazz Festival at the beautiful Palau de la Musica Catalana. Jimmy Cobb and the So What Band were performing a 50th anniversary celebration of the legendary Miles Davis album Kind of Blue from beginning to end. Cobb appeared with five younger musicians — including trumpeter Wallace Rooney.
Funnily enough, Cobb wasn’t playing a cover, because he was the drummer on the original album. But for the other five musicians, the evening was a night of covers. However, jazz has a long tradition of performing Tin Pan Alley chestnuts and jazz standards, and then adding the personal touches of improvisation. The good musicians always manage to make the old new — that’s the genius of jazz.
On this night, for example, Cobb applied more definitive Spanish rhythms to “Flamenco Sketches” than were heard on the original album, and the other players took up the challenge to provide wonderful Spanish textures. (It was oh-so-fitting, since we were sitting in a theater in Barcelona.)
A few days later, at the Museu Picasso, we toured a room full of some 40 paintings by Picasso in which he brought his own latter-day cubist style to interpret Velázquez’s 1656 masterpiece, Las Meninas.
Once again, the value of the cover is evident — thanks to these paintings, we understand more about the style and mastery of Picasso and of Velázquez. The art work offers another fascinating example of the value of reinterpreting something from the past, and helping to keep it alive for the present and the future.
