Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

n the America not ruled by the imperative to buy and sell cheap ground meat, however, something has been happening to my beloved hamburger, something about which I have mixed emotions.

Had I not taken a dead-end dishwashing job while on summer vacation, I would not have become a cook. Had I not become a cook, I would never and could never have become a chef. Had I not become a chef, I never would have been able to fuck up so spectacularly. Had I not known what it was like to fuck up—really fuck up—and spend years cooking brunches in bullshit no-star joints around town, that obnoxious but wildly successful memoir I wrote wouldn’t have been half as interesting.
Because—just

So it’s never just business. It’s always, always, personal.

Customers should understand that what they are paying for, in any restaurant situation, is not just what’s on the plate—but everything that’s not on the plate: all the bone, skin, fat, and waste product which the chef did pay for, by the pound