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Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

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Author : Anthony Bourdain
Binding : Hardcover
EAN : 9781582340821
Edition : 1
ISBN : 158234082X
Label : Bloomsbury USA
Manufacturer : Bloomsbury USA
Number of pages : 288
Publication date : 2000-05-22
Publisher : Bloomsbury USA
Title : Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Languages : Array
Number of items : 1
Studio : Bloomsbury USA

Editorial reviews

Product Description

New York Chef Tony Bourdain gives away secrets of the trade in his wickedly funny, inspiring memoir/expose. Kitchen Confidential reveals what Bourdain calls "twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine."

Last summer, The New Yorker published Chef Bourdain's shocking, "Don't Eat Before Reading This." Bourdain spared 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.

Amazon.com Review
Most diners believe that their sublime sliver of seared foie gras, topped with an ethereal buckwheat blini and a drizzle of piquant huckleberry sauce, was created by a culinary artist of the highest order, a sensitive, highly refined executive chef. The truth is more brutal. More likely, writes Anthony Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, that elegant three-star concoction is the collaborative effort of a team of "wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts, and psychopaths," in all likelihood pierced or tattooed and incapable of uttering a sentence without an expletive or a foreign phrase. Such is the muscular view of the culinary trenches from one who's been groveling in them, with obvious sadomasochistic pleasure, for more than 20 years. CIA-trained Bourdain, currently the executive chef of the celebrated Les Halles, wrote two culinary mysteries before his first (and infamous) New Yorker essay launched this frank confessional about the lusty and larcenous real lives of cooks and restaurateurs. He is obscenely eloquent, unapologetically opinionated, and a damn fine storyteller--a Jack Kerouac of the kitchen. Those without the stomach for this kind of joyride should note his opening caveat: "There will be horror stories. Heavy drinking, drugs, screwing in the dry-goods area, unappetizing industry-wide practices. Talking about why you probably shouldn't order fish on a Monday, why those who favor well-done get the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel, and why seafood frittata is not a wise brunch selection.... But I'm simply not going to deceive anybody about the life as I've seen it." --Sumi Hahn

Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-10-31 rating:

Brings Back Memories
It has been over 20 years since I worked in the restaurant business, but reading Bourdain's book brought back a lot of memories of what the business and the many characters who inhabit it are like. I found Bourdain's book to be very entertaining and reflects much of what I remember about the world of food preparation and service. Bourdain's management style is quite different from my own and I am not sure that I would want to work for the guy, (or have him work for me), but he is a great writer and accurately depicts the life in the biz.

review by: date: 2008-10-31 rating:

Oh the Memories!
I love how Anthony Bourdain can add sophistication to the grueling and raw life hidden behind the walls of our favorite resurtants. I worked in a kitchen growing up and it's amazing how universal some of his stories and lessons truely are! I LOVED IT!

review by: date: 2008-10-13 rating:

A great read!
It's amazing where writing talent is found. I originally discovered Bourdain via his "Les Halles Cookbook" -- one of the funniest cookbooks I have ever read. And then slowly, I began to remember -- hadn't this same guy written an earlier book, much more scandalous?

Well, this is that earlier book. You may not care for the tales it tells, or think very highly of the author, but the man writes like a god! Most of his best jokes are on himself, and all of the wimped-out sissy mistakes he made on the way to becoming a member of The Brotherhood, and its storyteller.

One of his bottom lines: "This stuff is EASY. My cooks are all recent immigrants from Latin America who had never tasted anything better than a taco in their lives. If they can learn, so can you."

It is also, for me, quite amazing to really sit back and think about a gang of five or six guys who actually manage to serve dinner to 600 people! Not once, but day in and day out! For this, you don't want no inspiration, you are not in the market for genius, man, you are a member of the freeping army/ballet corps, and everything depends on precise execution of tasks you have done a kazillion times before. (Oops, I slipped into quasi-Bourdain mode there.)

This book is really a lot better than Orwell's pretentious "Down and Out in Paris in London," especially when you learn that Orwell was basically a middle-class guy who volunteered to go slumming, and left when he got tired of it. This is not the case with Bourdain. This is HIS LIFE, and I for one really appreciate his gusto, his zest, and his willingness to work hard for what he wants.

Enjoy, enjoy (and don't order fish from a restaurant on Monday!)

review by: date: 2008-10-06 rating:

All Irritating Attitude
Either the writer is an arrogant, obnoxious, irritating, attitudinal jerk, or he wants us to think that he is an arrogant, obnoxious, irritating, attitudinal jerk. Either way, I couldn't be bothered to finish this book. Sorry I bought it and thereby increased the guy's income.

review by: date: 2008-10-04 rating:

Yes and No....
Maybe because I am a chef I did not find the book hilarious as would probably a person who is not in the business. But, there were times when I found myself laughing out loud. Unfortunately, not enough times. I also found myself skipping paragraphs and a few pages. I did not find it boring but it was too cutesy of writing. I enjoyed how it showed his time line and if you put your mind to it you can succeed. After awhile I was tired of his long winded decriptions of whatever he was trying to describe. It was okay at first but then became trite. The book was 310 pages and it could have been successful at 200 pages. I had to nudge myself at times to get through. I enjoyed reading about his misadventures with incompentent owners which I could definitely relate to. Also, enjoyed the makeup of the different cooks.

I would be reading and enjoying the book and I would think to myself that I was being too harsh on the author when I would get to the next paragraph and I would see that my original opionion of it only being 3 stars was correct. I would reccommend this book to everyone because everyone has different tastes.

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