If the name “Jimmy Sears” rings a bell, somewhere along the way you must’ve read Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain’s bestselling “Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.” The book dispels any lofty notions a reader might have about the cooking life. It’s blunt and graphic, but it is also terrifically written. There’s heavy drinking, sex, cocaine, and heroin. And there are colorful characters like Bigfoot, Vladimir, and Adam Real Last Name Unknown. And then there is Jimmy Sears, “a brilliant cook … [who] really inspired me” and who Bourdain describes in Medium Raw as “the single most talented cook I ever worked with.” That said, here is how the author sums up Sears’s behavior pattern: “finding a way to f— up badly whenever success threatens, accompanied by a countervailing ability to bounce back again and again—or, at the very least, survive.”

Jimmy Sears’s real name is John Tesar—he was eliminated last week from Top Chef. Along with another reporter, I had the chance to talk on the phone with the restaurateur, now based in Dallas and proudly running Spoon Bar & Kitchen.