Kitchen Confidential

Kitchen Confidential Review

Anthony Bourdain is an excellent writer and surprisingly erudite. I didn't expect his writing to be, frankly, elegant. I guess because when I read this book I knew absolutely zero about him other than what I could glean from the cover. So, I made some assumptions just by looking at him. Shame on me, I did attempt to judge a book (and the man) by its cover. So, I'm thinking...hmm...a chef. Well, maybe he has some interesting stories but...No matter how good the tale, poor or perfunctory execution won't help.

Also, I'm not a foodie. I'm all about the microwave, making reservations and take out. But this turned out to be more of a memoir traversing the orgins of his somewhat edgy roots to making a name for himself as high profile chef. And I do like a good memoir.

Though I think the blurb for this book bills it as some sort of expose' of the restaurant business, I think that's overstating things probably for marketing purposes. I found this book to be substantive, interesting, entertaining, laugh-out-loud funny in spots and Bourdain, here again, surprisingly introspective and self-aware. Like a said: a good MEMOIR.

Kitchen Confidential Overview

After 25 years of sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine, chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain has decided to tell all. From dishwasher to chef, from the Rainbow Room in the Rockerfeller Center to drug dealers in the East Village, his tales are as unpredictable as they are funny and shocking.

Kitchen Confidential Specifications

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

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