Back in 2000, Kitchen Confidential catapulted a broke, relatively unknown chef named Anthony Bourdain to culinary superstardom. And while the book sought to expose the dark underbelly of the restaurant industry in its some 320 pages, the most famous section of Kitchen Confidential continues to be when Bourdain warns customers of the dangers of eating fish on Monday. Prior to the new millennium, restaurant-goers apparently had no idea that New York City fish markets were closed on weekends, and that Midtown pubs weren’t always serving the freshest seafood money could buy.

Now, more than 16 years after the publication of Kitchen Confidential, the Parts Unknown host has finally changed his tune, telling Tech Insider that it once again OK to eat fish at the beginning of a new work week. The food business has changed so drastically over the last decade-and-a-half that the same rules no longer apply.

“Just the variety of fish that we want to eat in restaurants and are open to eating. The way in which we eat, the temperature at which we eat, has completely changed,” Bourdain says in the video. “We know now what good fish is, and the market has had to respond to that. It can’t get away with serving us the crap they used to.”

Though Bourdain marvels at the kinds of fish we’re will to eat today (decades ago, few would have imagined sushi restaurants on every corner) he still cautions against ordering sketchy seafood plates from bottom-shelf restaurants.

“I’m not suggesting that you go to, you know, Monday at the local fake Irish pub, they’re running a mussels special,” he says. “Maybe that’s still not such a great idea.”

Regardless of whether the public hears Bourdain’s new, more enlightened message when it comes to ordering the occasional aquatic delicacy, the chef knows the phrase “I Never Eat Fish on Monday” will likely be engraved on his tombstone.

“Do me one favor: Eat the fish on Monday,” he says. “It was 16 years ago. It was a very different world.”

[via Lifehacker, Tech Insider]