Hal pertama yang Anda dapat setelah Anda membuka Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World adalah sebuah peta: Peta Akhir Dunia. Ini membawa banyak pertanyaan ke pikiran dan membuat pembaca menaruh beberapa harapan: Apakah ini akan menjadi perjalanan yang menantang melalui tempat-tempat yang dijelaskan dalam peta? Apakah ini era abad pertengahan? Dan pertanyaan-pertanyaan lainnya yang berhubungan dengan peta tersebut akan hancur dalam deskripsi di bab pertama. Seolah Murakami baru saja memberi salam hangat kepada pembaca, “Selamat datang di dunia (buku) surreal saya.”The first thing caught after you opened Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World book is a map: The End of the World map. It brought questions to the mind and made the readers put some expectations: Will it be a challenging journey through the places described in the map? Is it medieval era? And other map-related questions that popped will be crushed to the 1st chapter detailing description. It’s just like Murakami said greeting warmly to the readers, “Welcome to my surreal (book) world.”

I thought it was a spark of missing a location called restaurant, last place where I worked for, but my chemistry with this book definitely beyond “missing”.

C2o library classified “Kitchen Confidential, Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly” by Anthony Bourdain into business/management section, but I personally disagree. It’s a memoir. I didn’t said that the book doesn’t told us how to manage a restaurant, yes it is, but the real sensation is how Bourdain made the reader as his fellow traveler to traverse an up-down yet magnetizing adventure at his chefdom life.

In a narrative way, Bourdain start to steal attention in his Appetizer part. He promised nothing of this book, which become more appealing because of my triggered mind with “the nothingness”. Then flowing nonstop as a sushi bar, the journey begins and every part of food and restaurant revealed. Bourdain used, and repetitively overused, tons of adjective word to describe as vivid image as he could for every part of the book. You will unconsciously salivating for reading menu description and having goosebumps for a story of savage owner.

Don’t be surprised for the amount of cursing along Kitchen Confidential. It is harsh, maybe, for some readers but it also shows the honest side on how the stories being delivered. You will meet the hard part of being a chef: your uncontrollable cooks, fussy but mega-billionaire owner, customer complaints, sassy purveyor, and of course drugs and sex. It is amazing how he brought all of these smoothly and enjoyable to read.

My favorite part is Second Course where Bourdain even give you step-by-step on How to Cook like A Pro! Through the book, Bourdain give whole clue involving food, not only for restaurateur, chef, or any people who involved in restaurant business, but also for a real stranger who never heard what demi-glace is. He could show many aspects that we could learn from food: politic, strategy, joke, romance, game, ambition, etc.

When I read Kitchen Confidential, I burst in laughter, my heart skipped a beat, and I do evaluating myself again and again. I have a lot of fun reading this book, I hope it’ll be yours also!