Your Kitchen’s Most Overlooked Tool: Music

Your Kitchen’s Most Overlooked Tool: Music

Your Kitchen’s Most Overlooked Tool: Music


Just like the perfect workout mix, the right culinary compilation can heighten the adrenaline required cook. Chefs take this seriously.

Mario Batali has been known to blast modern and classic rock throughout this restaurants and he maintains an ever-evolving playlist on his website.

Anthony Bourdain—a die-hard Ramones, Modern Lovers, and Television fan—has a reputation for firing anyone in his kitchen caught playing Billy Joel (Bourdain’s playlist here).

David Schuttenberg of Cabrito in NYC posts his specially designed punk rock kitchen mix tapes on Twitter (@CabritoChefDave) and his Facebook page.

Take a lesson from these guys: Good kitchen music isn’t smooth-jazz, it’s not Top 40s, and it should never contain the words Kenny or Loggins. Good kitchen music reflects the blood, sweat, and toil of cooking. It’s fast-paced, rough around the edges, and anti-establishment. It’s fuel.

Theme Magazine recently released the best food mix I’ve heard. The download has since been removed, but use the track listing and a couple of bucks in the iTunes store to your culinary advantage. This playlist is still far from complete. There are plenty of food tunes still out there waiting to set the soundtrack to chopping, sautéing, reducing and plating.

I’ll add some of mine. You add some of yours. Then, after our knives are sharpened and our speakers are cranked up to 10, we can start cooking.