Why? Because Tony is dead man, he's fucking dead, he's not coming back and it sucks, it sucks so bad.
In my almost two decades as a front line chef I never really gave much time to celebrity chefs, I mean I knew of them, I occasionally watched a show by one of them, but it was just fluff. TV demanded fluff, happy smiley faces, or angry ones, Gordon, but they never really got it.
They never really captured the real chef, what it was like to be a cook, to be the grunt at the coal face, sweat dripping down your neck, across your chest and into your crutch... that's seriously what happens peeps, they just dont show it.
And they sure don't talk about it, you don't ever really read about it, until... a tiny book appears. It's called Kitchen Confidential and wow holy fucking wow, who wrote this, who is this guy, I must have worked with him because these stories they're, well they're me. They're me and every other chef I'd ever worked with.
The anger, the toil, the sweat, the drugs, holy crap the drugs, the late nights that became mornings that became days and so more drugs. Hell, we can rest on Sunday, because now we cook. We cook until we drop, he spoke about chefs dropping, dropping on the line, being dragged out the back to gather themselves, someone else stepping into their place, because we gotta cook. You don't just stop because one stopped, power on, power on like Tony, power on like that guy and this girl and me.
Fuck it Tony, just fuck it.
I sit here now wondering why he hurt so much, why nobody knew he was hurting so much. Why don't other people know when you're hurting so bad that you end it and now your 11 year old is grieving and your wife and your friends and all of us who so related and held you up as the one dude who understood it all... sleep well Tony and thank you, thank you so so much
Comments