Last year, well-known New York chef Anthony Bourdain published "Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly," a scathing yet passionate book on the inner workings of a professional restaurant kitchen. In the tome he tells tales and anecdotes drawn from the personal lives and kitchen habits of New York's chefs and cooks.
While the personal lives are certainly interesting, the kitchen conduct of some of the professionals he describes seems, at best, horrendous. Through these stories, he warns us not to order the fish on Monday and to never, ever, order the mussels unless we know the chef personally.
Bourdain's alarmist intentions are well-received but must be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt. Of course, the public shouldn't be served anything less than fresh, and many Western methods of food preparation currently in vogue do not lend themselves to a long shelf life. So maybe, yes, while in New York, do avoid the fish on Monday, but when you are in Osaka, come on in and let me show you a way to deal with the no-fish-deliveries-on-Monday problem.