In a Q&A; with Nation’s Restaurant News, Anthony Bourdain lays down the obligatory hyperbole about the state of the industry (“There is going to be an apocalyptic shakeout. On the plus side, the bullsh** will be the first to go”) but what interests us most is his description of his upcoming book: “It’s a post–Kitchen Confidential look at how the industry has changed. The backbone of the cooking business has remained the same: immigrants. But there’s been an enormous influx of trained culinary students, fairly educated middle-class kids, for whom cooking is a viable lifestyle option. That was not the option when I started. Some unscrupulous culinary schools are cranking out huge numbers, with massive student loans, and they might have unjustifiable expectations about how much money they will make.” Wait, does he mean how much money in the kitchen, or when they go on to sell their first book?
