'The Bobby Gold Stories'

Anthony Bourdain is a master of everything food.

He is an executive chef, television host, and author. Many fans are familiar with his book "Kitchen Confidential," a behind-the-scenes exposè of the restaurant business.

Bourdain visited The Saturday Early Show to discuss his new novel, "The Bobby Gold Stories," which mixes crime and cuisine.

The story is told against the backdrop of what Bourdain knows best, the food industry. From the bizarre sub-culture of a restaurant kitchen to the mob's affiliation with a New York City nightclub, Bourdain describes the people, work and atmosphere that captured his fascination as a teenager in his first restaurant job.

(Click here to read an except from "The Bobby Gold Stories.")

"The Bobby Gold Stories" is the third novel from Anthony Bourdain. Born in New York in 1956 and raised in New Jersey, Bourdain started in the restaurant business as a dishwasher at the age of 17. It was an atmosphere that he was drawn to immediately and has hardly left since.

After graduating from a private all-boys high school, Bourdain enrolled at Vassar College but dropped out to cook. It was at Vassar that he met the person who would eventually lead to his publishing career, his roommate.

After Vassar, Bourdain earned a degree from the Culinary Institute of America in 1978 and began working the New York City restaurant circuit. He also developed a liking for cocaine and heroin. It was time of life that he says helped inspire "Bobby Gold."

Bourain's life changed when he sold an article to the "New Yorker" magazine in the late 1990s, exposing some of the not-so-appetizing secrets of the restaurant business. That article led to the publication of the non-fiction "Kitchen Confidential," a New York Times best-seller.

It was the success of this book that helped him straighten out his life. He is now the Executive Chef at "Les Halles" in New York City. His previous two failed novels are now selling, and his most recent non-fiction book, "A Cook's Tour," is the basis of a TV show, currently in its second season on the Food Network. In this capacity, Anthony has the tough job of traveling the world eating at the most exotic restaurants, places to which the fictional Bobby Gold travels as well, such as Bora Bora, Singapore, Japan, China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia.

In the book, Bobby Gold (short for Goldstein) is a tough guy with a good heart, who spends his life questioning the situations he always seems to get himself into, and can never seem to get himself out of. Eight years in jail on a cocaine conviction really changes Bobby, as he morphs from a scrawny college student, into a cold-blooded, muscle-bound brute. It's not until Bobby Gold meets and falls in love with Nikki, the line cook in the kitchen of NiteKlub, that he feels any real emotion at all.

Anthony Bourdain discussed his book in a phone interview with The Saturday Early Show. The following is a transcript from that interview.

Where did the plot for the Bobby Gold stories come from?

It's about people who live on the margins that are yearning to be normal. I have looked at the general public, wondering how they live. I had an epiphany, I was doing very normal things. Having barbecue's for kids, doing nice things. I never owned a home, always lived paycheck to paycheck.

Bobby Gold has been described as a loveable criminal. He's a pre-med student, thrown in jail on cocaine charges, who comes out big and strong, working as a bouncer at a nightclub and as an enforcer roughing up people who owe his boss money. Yet, he is sensitive and romantic. How much of these qualities are yours? Is it how you would like to be?

I think it's particular to chefs, who are militaristic, egomaniacal and who, when they are in the kitchen, are completely self-confident. But in their social lives, most of the time, they are terribly inept and shy and uncomfortable outside the sub-culture of the kitchen.

Is Bobby someone in particular?

No, but I've known a number of guys like him. I've known guys that broke arms for a living. My goal was to make Bobby as unsympathic as possible without alienating the reader. The tension is 'Am I still going to like the character in the next chapter, is he going to cross the line?'

Is this the first time you've written about Bobby Gold?

Yes, it's the first time this character's appeared. I guess in working through personal issues in fiction, my life circumstances have changed a lot. I wanted to write about people.

Why did you make Bobby a Jewish character?

I thought, I read a book about tough Jews a while back, and I love the idea about old time big Jewish gangsters, and wanted a different hero. It made him more sympathetic and interesting to me.

You seem to have a bit of a fascination with organized crime.

I love dialect. I love how people talk. Just general crime. When I got into the business, the mafia was big into restaurants. I had to work for them a lot. [Boursain is a big fan of mafia books and movies.]

When did you start writing? Before you went into the kitchen?

I started as a dishwasher at age 17. I was bribed by my old college roommate. He had gotten into a drunken conversation with a publisher he knew and told him that the book they were talking about had terrible writing, that he knew a much better writer. So, desperate to cover his butt, he called me and begged me to write a sample, because I used to write all his papers in college for drugs and cash. I turned in the sample and got a book deal out of it. I had two unsuccessful crime novels in '95 and '96, and they're doing well now, but then "Kitchen Confidential" came along and changed everything.

How would you describe your writing style? Where does it come from?

I don't really understand the general public. I write for cooks. I want my stuff to not sound bogus to people that work in that world. I talk like that. There's a powerful tradition of storytelling and bullshitting in my business, and I come from that tradition.

In my book, pure evil is someone that doesn't eat well or treats the staff badly, or someone that goes against something that I see as being right.

Was there any fallout for you within the restaurant community for "Kitchen Confidential"?

Not from chefs and cooks. I've been all over the world, and people have been nothing but great to me. Free drinks, free food wherever I go.

The practices that you expose in that book, how do you stop them from happening in your restaurant?

It's different times. I would fire someone known to be doing cocaine at work or even after. When someone like me says that, you know things have changed a bit. But the kind of people that work in kitchens are still the same. We're all peasants and maniacs and refugees. We always have been, always will be, and we're proud of that. We're different than our customers.

What did you find so sexy about being a chef (working in a kitchen)?

It was a world that would accept me. People that worked with their hands, that had a craft, and I wanted to be involved. And it's a very sensual business where ex-cons and brutes can use there sense of taste and smell. (and be creative)

Do you want to see this or your other books made into a movie?

All three novels have been optioned. "Kitchen Confidential" has been sold, and it's looking good for Bobby Gold. There's a really good actor attached to Bobby Gold, but I can't talk about it.

And you have the television show?

I go to cool places that I've always dreamed of going and get paid to eat and drink. It's a dream come true. I make a list every year of places I want to go, and I get to do it.

Bobby Gold, in black jeans, black, short-sleeved T-shirt and black trainers, walked up the steps of the empty club. On the second floor mezzanine, he heard a toilet flush, waited for whoever it was to emerge. The mezzanine was still a mess from the night before - the maintenance crew still busy waxing the dance floor. The door opened and a girl came out, dressed in chef's whites. Bobby had seen her before in the kitchen - they called her the "sauté bitch" in there, he seemed to recall.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," said Bobby, a little flustered. He didn't spend much time with women - and he was thrown by how good she looked in the sexless, double-breasted uniform and checked polyester pants. "You're in early aren't you?"

"Yeah," she said. "Prep for the party tonight. I gotta get the stocks going."

"Oh," said Bobby. She was tall - maybe five-ten, with long, dark hair that smelled like it had just been washed and her eyes - dark, almost Asian-looking - flashed with intelligence. There was the hint of a smile - the slightly sour, self-deprecating smirk of someone who's had their ass kicked and survived the experience.

"You a fan of classic comedy?" she asked, seemingly apropos of nothing.

"What do you mean?" Bobby asked, "Like what? The Marx Brothers? Fields? Chaplin?"

"I meant more like Lenny Bruce," said the girl. "Remember him?"

"I saw the movie - if that's what you mean. Dustin Hoffman played him, right?"

"Yep," said the girl.

"Good movie."

"Yeah . . . well . . . I don't know how to tell you this - but there's a guy doing a really good Lenny Bruce imitation in one of the stalls in there," she said, jerking her head in the direction of the bathroom.

Bobby thought no way she meant what he thought she meant. He hurried into the bathroom, walked quickly down to the last stall - the only one still closed - and leaned against the door. It wouldn't open. When he pushed, it felt as if someone had piled a stack of flour sacks against the other side.

He entered the next stall, stood on top of the toilet and peeked down over the divider.

She was right about the Lenny Bruce thing. There was a man in there - pants down around his ankles, one sleeve rolled up, a syringe hanging out of his arm, just below a tightened belt. He was dead, and he was blue, slumped over to one side with his legs jammed against the stall door, eyes staring straight up at Bobby like a lifeless flounder's.

Bobby got back down from the toilet and went back outside. The girl was smoking, sitting on a banquette, watching for his reaction. She'd gone in there, he realized, found the body and calmly sat down for a piss, before exiting.

"See what I mean?" she said, smiling.

"It's Lenny all over," said Bobby, unable to take his eyes off of her.

He was in love.

Copyright 2002 by Anthony Bourdain, published by Bloomsbury USA ll rights reserved, reprinted with permission from the publisher.