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In a not-too-distant future L.A. where master chefs rule the town like crime lords and people literally kill for a seat at the best restaurants, a bloody culinary war is raging.
On one side, the Internationalists, who blend foods from all over the world into exotic delights. On the other, the "Vertical Farm," who prepare nothing but organic, vegetarian, macrobiotic dishes. Into this maelstrom steps Jiro, a renegade and ruthless sushi chef, known to decapitate patrons who dare request a California Roll, or who stir wasabi into their soy sauce. Both sides want Jiro to join their factions. Jiro, however has bigger ideas, and in the end, no chef may be left alive!
Anthony Bourdain, top chef, acclaimed writer (Kitchen Confidential, Medium Raw) and star of the hit travel show, No Reservations, co-writes with Joel Rose (Kill Kill Faster Faster, The Blackest Bird) this stylized send-up of food culture and society, with detailed and dynamic art by Langdon Foss.
Born in 1956, Anthony Bourdain graduated from the world-renowned Culinary Institute of America. He began running New York kitchens at restaurants such as Supper Club, One Fifth Avenue, and Sullivan's. His extensive body of work has graced the pages of The Times, New York Times, Observer, the Face, and Scotland on Sunday. He is an ongoing contributor and authority for Food Arts magazine. Bourdain's fictional works include two crime novels - 1997's Gone Bamboo and Bone in the Throat in 1995. His book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly was a bestseller, with an updated edition published in 2007. In 2002, the Food Network debuted what would become a twenty-two episode series featuring Bourdain circling the globe and feeding his adventure eating habit with the most extreme cuisine the world had to offer. The inspired bestselling book, A Cook's Tour In Search of the Perfect Meal, met with huge success in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Joel Rose's most recent novel is The Blackest Bird, which has been translated into 13 languages. Previous books include Kill the Poor, Kill Kill Faster Faster (both of which have been made into films), and New York Sawed in Half. For DC Comics, he wrote the graphic novels LA PACIFICA and THE BIG BOOK OF THUGS.
Bourdain's career has been characterized by more unexpected twists and turns than one would find in one of his novels. After the native New Yorker graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, he opened his own classic French Bistro, Brasserie Les Halles. However, never satisfied with simply traveling a single avenue, Bourdain tried his hand at penning a novel. The results were wholly unexpected: A witty, gritty mob tale set in the Little Italy section of Manhattan, Bone in the Throat was published in 1995. Bourdain's second novel, Gone Bamboo, followed two years later, and once again the writer's innate knack for black humor was on full display. Publishers Weekly confidently christened him "a new master of the wiseass crime comedy."
Of course, by the time the public had placed Bourdain in a specific literary niche, he was already on to bigger game. In 1999, The New Yorker published "Don't Eat Before Reading This," his scathing exposé of conditions within certain New York restaurants. The article, which garnered wide attention, would ultimately evolve into the critically lauded full-length book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. Bourdain brought the same cutting humor and confident swagger that marked his novels to his first nonfiction work, establishing a distinct voice that followed him from genre to genre. Jumping from memoir (The Nasty Bits) to biography (Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical) to culinary how-to (Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook), Bourdain served up his smartypants prose with the same skill he brought to his celebrated cuisine.
In the end, even as Bourdain continues to wear many hats -- master chef, restaurant entrepreneur, novelist, essayist, TV star -- his heart still lies in the kitchen. "When you've been a cook and chef for twenty-eight years, as I have, you never really look at the world from any other perspective," he told PreviewPort.com in 2002. "In many ways that's helpful with all the nonsense -- as one tends to have low expectations. For the time being -- I'm making it up as I go along and trying to enjoy the ride while it lasts."
You can add sitcom creator to Bourdain's long list of accomplishments. In 2005, FOX TV produced a comedy series based on his book Kitchen Confidential only to unceremoniously cancel the series before it even aired.
Bourdain can currently be seen traveling the world in search of the ultimate eating experience in his very own series Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations on the Discovery Channel.
1.) What made you decide to write a graphic novel? Were you always a fan of the medium and had this story on your mind for a while?
Anthony Bourdain: I've been a comics fan since childhood—when I was a serious collector of early Marvels (1960s, MAD, horror comics—later began collecting EC's, a few Golden Age, and late 60's West Coast Undergrounds). An early ambition was to be the next R. Crumb. Sadly, my illustration skills—while decent—were not up to anywhere near that standard. When Joel Rose brought the idea back up after an earlier discussion, I thought, "What red blooded American boy in his mid fifties wouldn't do a graphic novel if given the chance? Let's try! As long as we can do it right." The fact that Vertigo, very early on, was supportive of the kind of high quality art we were looking for made all the difference.
2.) How have your travels across the world informed this story? Did you draw inspiration from anything specific?
AB: Well, I clearly love Japan—and am obsessed with hyper-fetishistic, uncompromising old school style sushi, and due to my travels, have been lucky enough to spend a lot of time there. But the book reflects a lot of my food obsessions (funky classic brasserie/bistro) and prejudices. Travel changes you. It exposes you to things. My love of street food is certainly a product of my travels.
3.) Food culture as a whole has been a bit of a phenomenon in the media over the last few years, but not so much in comics. Was that part of your motivation for wanting to create Get Jiro?
AB: I think the explosion of interest in chefs and restaurants is certainly easy fodder for satire. But my motivation was really nothing more than to help tell a story that would be fun, extremely bloody, beautifully illustrated—and insanely detailed as to the specifics of cooking and eating. I'm a big fan of classic Japanese cinema, Hammett's RED HARVEST, spaghetti westerns and food—so these were obvious elements.
4). Your co-writer, Joel Rose, and artist Langdon Foss have both done comic work in the past. What was it like working with them, and how did their experience with creating comics help shape the book?
AB: Joel is the very first guy in the world to have ever published me—back when he ran the legendary Lower East Side literary magazine, Between C and D. He's a friend, whose books I admire enormously, who's been supportive—an even instrumental—in my career since the beginning, for over two decades. It surely helped that he also worked on some of the most influential graphic novels of the last decades and that he had previous relationships with Vertigo. Most importantly, he knows how to tell a story. I care less about that. I'm all about dialogue and atmospherics. I think we complement each other's work nicely. I hope so.
Overview
In a not-too-distant future L.A. where master chefs rule the town like crime lords and people literally kill for a seat at the best restaurants, a bloody culinary war is raging.
On one side, the Internationalists, who blend foods from all over the world into exotic delights. On the other, the "Vertical Farm," who prepare nothing but organic, vegetarian, macrobiotic dishes. Into this maelstrom steps Jiro, a renegade and ruthless sushi chef, known to decapitate patrons who dare ...