Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
by Anthony Bourdain

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
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Book Summary Information

Author: Anthony Bourdain
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 2000-05-22
ISBN: 158234082X
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

Book Reviews of Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Book Review: Who doesn't like this guy???
Summary: 5 Stars

When I picked this book out all I knew about Anthony Bordain is what I saw on No Reservations. He seemed like a cool guy and lived his life exactly like I want to live mine. When I was reading this, I felt like it connected even more than I had anticipated. I've worked in the service industry for a long time and know exactly the type of people he described. Anyone in the industry, whether it be front of house or kitchen will be able to relate to and enjoy this book on some level. For people that have never set foot in a restaurant as an employee will still enjoy the stories he tells and his rise from dishwasher to executive chef of a New York restaurant. Those outsiders will learn things they've never wanted to know about their dining experiences. All in all it's one of the best books I've ever read. Obviously, not just cooks will like this book considering it made the best seller list. Tony is the man and in no way do I feel he sold out, he does what he likes to do and learned from his past mistakes. Every person should read this book before the next time they go out to eat.

Summary of Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

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
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.

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