February 19, 2007
Sound Bites - Eating on Tour with Franz Ferdinand
Sound Bites - Eating on Tour with Franz Ferdinand
Alex Kapranos
Published December 2006 by Penguin
Alex Kapranos, singer and guitarist of the band Franz Ferdinand, has done some traveling in the past few years. As a result of two hit albums with world-wide appeal this former back room prep cook found himself rubbing shoulders with all manner of folk at impressive (and unimpressive) restaurants around the globe. Sound Bites is a memoir of those eating experiences and Kapranos’ own adventures as a food preparer. It reveals a hilarious and sensory overloaded inner monologue filled with a wry perspective on people, places and of course food. He supplies an unending stream of short stories which may lead you to forever question just what goes into the preparation of your food.
Some of the stories were orginally published in UK newspaper The Guardian, so each story is no more than four pages long. One page your walking among the fish stalls of London, the next among the Kim Chi bars of Korea. Sometimes the stories will focus completely on the food, and sometimes the food isn’t the story at all but the unusual people he is situated with while consuming. Kapranos has a flair for capturing a complete sense of the environment he is in and the history that is defining the meal or the location for him. Each anecdote is transformed into a personal moment shared with the reader, an inside look at his thought processes and what led up to the moment.
It’s fitting that one story is devoted to visiting Anthony Bourdain’s restaurant Les Halles. Kapranos’ story telling style seems inspired by the refined raunchiness exhibited in Kitchen Confidential as well as in Bourdain’s general demeanor. Only the bravest attempt bull testicles and raw shellfish of unknown nature, and often his bandmates are less than pleased with his choices. For them each meal is a culinary adventure tempered by a simple longing for In ‘n Out Burger.
Kapranos’ descriptions of his past, and possibly himself preparing the very food he is about to eat at one of the numerous kitchens he was employed in, often leads one at the end of the story to wonder why he was eating it in the first place at all. He’s clearly unfazed any longer by the process for obtaining some of these delicacies. As long as it has the prospect of it tasting good or interesting, Kapranos is going to try it.
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