It doesn’t take a savvy chef or a native New Yorker to enjoy Kitchen Confidential. While the setting and subject matter are unusual, anyone could get a kick out of this book. It is captivating and surprising with a funny-scary whiplash that has the same tasteful balance as the meals coming out of Bourdain’s kitchens. The chapters are like well-planned courses, each imparting its own flavor to the book.

Bourdain’s multifaceted approach to the culinary arts and the food business gives you a unique impression of the trade that you’d never catch a glimpse of as a simple patron of restaurants: He takes you through the trials of culinary school, the tense negotiations with food vendors, the pirate-like stealing of cooks from other restaurants, as well as a few things you probably didn’t want to know…

I will eat bread in restaurants, even if I know its been recycled off someone else’s table. The reuse of bread is an industry-wide practice… This doesn’t bother me and shouldn’t surprise you. Okay, maybe once in a while some tubercular hillbilly has been coughing and spraying in the general direction of that bread basket, or some tourist who’s just returned from a walking tour of the Wetlands of West Africa sneezes – you might find that prospect upsetting. But you might just as well avoid air travel, or subways, equally dodgy environments for airborne transmission of disease. Eat the bread.

Really? I was under the blissfully ignorant assumption that all of that delicious restaurant food was carefully made under carefully-abided health (and moral) standards.

How about hollandaise sauce? Not for me. Bacteria love hollandaise. And hollandaise, that delicate emulsion of egg yolks and clarified butter, must be held at a temperature not too hot nor too cold, lest it break when spooned over your poached eggs. Unfortunately, this lukewarm holding temperature is also the favorite environment for bacteria to copulate and reproduce in. Nobody I know has ever made hollandaise sauce to order… Equally disturbing is the likelihood that the butter used in the hollandaise is melted table butter, headed, clarified and strained to get out all the bread crumbs and cigarette butts. Butter is expensive, you know.

As alarming as these claims are, Bourdain explains them, justifies them, and even defends them. The books isn’t an exposé of the horrors of the kitchen, it’s more like a reality check. These restaurants are businesses with struggles, politics, strengths and shortcomings. I’d rather know the real story, and Bourdain is an amazingly eloquent writer for someone who’s spent decades flinging insults at degenerate line-cooks in a steamy, hectic kitchen. If his writing is this good, imagine his food…

The book was on the 2007 New York Times Bestseller list, and has earned consistently high marks from readers. Amazon gives it 5 stars.

James Cameron's "Avatar"

…And you thought Avatar was a hit…

Activision’s latest episode of its smash-hit series “Call of Duty” surpassed $1 billion on sales today, rivaling James Cameron’s decade-in-the-making film “Avatar.” Fans of Avatar consider the movie to be so phenomenal that it makes reality uninteresting, and even “depressing” by comparison. Apparently, judging from its sales, “Call of Duty” is just as popular.

What’s the big deal about “Call of Duty”? Well, if you weren’t already aware, “Call of Duty is a video game, not a movie, and rarely does a video game haul in $1 billion in just a few short months. Even World of Warcraft, an addictive, well-established, video game with nearly 12 million paying subscribers, is not making money as quickly as “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.”

Strangely, the company that makes this wildly successful military sim (Activision) can’t seem to convince investors of the strength of its products; Activision’s stock price has fluttered around $10 per share despite having consistently successful game releases, and over $13 billion in cash reserves. In fact, after the latest “Call of Duty” game hit stores, Activision hauled in $550 million in the first five days. In terms of dollars spent, people bought “Call of Duty” faster than they bought Avatar tickets, Harry Potter books, or any other heavily anticipated release.

The fact that a top-shelf video game company’s standing can slump while it cranks out hit after hit is a testament to the fact that the general public simply isn’t ready to consider video games (and their releases) to be more than a sideshow designed for a subculture of college-aged males. But, whether the game is mainstream or not, and whether it appeals to everyone or just a few, it sold faster than those all-too-mainstream Harry Potter books, or those Avatar tickets that are now crumpled in the pockets of millions of moviegoers.

Like Avatar, Call of Duty has a rich, computer-rendered environment.

Consider this. Avatar was a (masterfully written) movie with beautiful scenery and classic good-versus-evil themes centered around a love story. Call of Duty is a gritty, violent game that basically drops you into the middle of a scene from Saving Private Ryan. Avatar, one could argue, appeals to a very broad audience, whereas Call of Duty is marketed narrowly at young males privileged enough to own a fast computer. Despite its tremendous success, I can’t help but wonder how much more successful Call of Duty would be if it somehow appealed to women, the middle-aged, and all of the other audiences that Avatar reached.