Kitchen Confidential

Anthony Bourdain

Dec 2008 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA

About this eBook

Anthony Bourdain, host of Parts Unknown, reveals "twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine" in his breakout New York Times bestseller Kitchen Confidential.

Bourdain spares no one's appetite when he told all about what happens behind the kitchen door. Bourdain uses the same "take-no-prisoners" attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable book, sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike. From Bourdain's first oyster in the Gironde, to his lowly position as dishwasher in a honky tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he witnesses for the first time the real delights of being a chef); from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, to drug dealers in the east village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable.

Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water while your belly aches with laughter. You'll beg the chef for more, please.

Ratings and reviews

In food terms I'd say it's edible. The chunk of the early part of the book is a repeating story of how Bourdain worked at some kitchen, made money, did drugs, found out the work wasn't going to have him long and move on to the next kitchen. It got boring for me to read the same story over and over again. Things do change and the middle of the book became a collection of unrelated short stories albeit of the same theme. My reaction to it all - meh!

The book itself was really good, until about halfway through it when the Google Play Books reader app for Android refused to read it without crashing, with no response from Google. It'll cost me 8 bucks to finish it. Amazon isn't renowned for their customer service, but it's miles better than Google's. I recommend buying this book from the Kindle store.

This is the first book I read about anything that had to do with food and I don't know if I regret it or not. The only reason I say this is because it took me too long to read because all it did was make me hungry every time Anthony wrote so vividly each dish he created or even food items I did not understand sounded awesome. I enjoyed it thoroughly and recommend it to anyone who is a food junky like me.

About the author

Chef and author Anthony Bourdain wrote the New York Times bestselling memoirs Kitchen Confidential, Medium Raw, and A Cook's Tour; the collection The Nasty Bits; the novels Bone in the Throat, The Bobby Gold Stories, and Gone Bamboo; the biography Typhoid Mary; and the cookbooks Appetites and Les Halles Cookbook.

Bourdain was the host of the Emmy and Peabody Award–winning docuseries Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown on CNN, and prior to that hosted the Emmy Award–winning No Reservations and The Layover on the Travel Channel and The Taste on ABC.