Why Anthony Bourdain Always Avoided Ordering Hollandaise Sauce At Restaurants

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Some food preferences are biological, like the unique gene that makes cilantro taste like soap to some. Some just trigger the old ick, like the legions of avowed mayo haters all over the globe. And other repulsions seem to emerge from a passion inflamed, like the intense rage that inspired Anthony Bourdain to compare the club sandwich to Al Qaeda. He didn't much care for hollandaise sauce served at restaurants, either, expressing serious concern for it from a food safety perspective.

"How about hollandaise sauce?" Bourdain wrote in his industry-rattling book "Kitchen Confidential." "Not for me. Bacteria love hollandaise. And hollandaise, that delicate emulsion of egg yolks and clarified butter, must be held at a temperature not too hot nor too cold, lest it break when spooned over your poached eggs. Unfortunately, this lukewarm holding temperature is also the favorite environment for bacteria to copulate and reproduce in." Now, this wouldn't be a problem if the hollandaise served atop your eggs Benedict was made à la minute, would it? But Bourdain hedged that potentiality, too.

"Nobody I know has ever made hollandaise to order," Anthony Bourdain wrote. "Most likely, the stuff on your eggs was made hours ago and held on station. Equally disturbing is the likelihood that the butter used in the hollandaise is melted table butter, heated, clarified, and strained to get out all the breadcrumbs and cigarette butts. Butter is expensive, you know. Hollandaise is a veritable petri dish of biohazards," he wrote. Convincing! But also a bit dated. 

The first edition of "Kitchen Confidential" was published in 2000. Today, the majority of states in the nation disallow smoking in restaurants and bars. So that's one little bête noire to put to bed. Now, the rest of the alarms, those might continue blaring (maybe not the repurposed butter, either, given the ubiquity of modern surveillance). But you can avoid them altogether by skipping hollandaise sauce at restaurants and simply making your own at home — and serving it immediately.

In spite of his fondness for the bloody Mary, Bourdain was a known brunch hater, so his hollandaise disdain is unsurprising. But hollandaise sauce has plenty of applications besides that classic weekend meal, eggs Benedict. And you can throw it together in the blender much faster than its froufrou reputation would lead you to believe. Whirl a few egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, and water together before slowly introducing the melted butter, then plate right away, and you've got a sauce considerably less likely to induce any venom or bacteria than the dodgy remnants that Bourdain cautioned against.