“God gives us meat, but the devil sends us cooks,” Anthony Bourdain told the Observer two decades ago. He viewed the phrase as a compliment, and considered kitchens second homes for damned souls and “the degraded and the debauched”.
At that moment, he was already well-known in New York, as author of the scandalous bestseller Kitchen Confidential and as chef and co-owner of Les Halles, a French brasserie on Park Avenue that for a time became the favored spot for the creative demimonde.
