The business, as respected three-star chef Scott Bryan explains it, attracts 'fringe elements', people for whom something in their lives has gone ter… - Anthony Bourdain

Starbucks’s truly beautiful idea was the simple realization that Americans wanted to spend more money for a cup of coffee, that they’d feel much better about themselves if they spent five dollars for a cup of joe rather than buy that cheap drip stuff that shows such as Friends suggested only fat white trash in housecoats (or people who actually worked for a living) drank anymore — in their trailer parks or meth labs or wherever such people huddled for comfort.

a monstrous, despotic, iron-fisted Frenchman who ruled his kitchen like President for Life Idi Amin, it was Chef Bernard.

What took me to cooking was that there was something honest about it,” says David Chang. There is no lying in the kitchen. And no god there, either. He couldn’t help you anyway. You either can — or can’t — make an omelet. You either can — or can’t — chop an onion, shake a pan, keep up with the other cooks, replicate again and again, perfectly, the dishes that need to be done. No credential, no amount of bullshit, no well-formed sentences or pleas for mercy will change the basic facts. The kitchen is the last meritocracy — a world of absolutes; one knows without any ambiguity at the end of each day how one did.