Kitchen Confidential Updated Ed: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.) | 
 enlarge | Author: Anthony Bourdain
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $4.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  560 reviews
Sales Rank: 596
Media: Paperback
Edition: Updated
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0060899220
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5092
EAN: 9780060899226
ASIN: 0060899220
Publication Date: January 9, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Pages clean, binding tight, no spine crease, cover has wear to edges, cover corners and edges curled upward slightly, packed in bubble mailer, tracking number is provided
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Amazon.com
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
Product Description
A deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade from Chef Anthony Bourdain, laying out his more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine—now with all-new, never-before-published material
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| Customer Reviews: Read 555 more reviews...
 Kitchen confidential July 22, 2008
Great book lots of good info. I don't go to buffets and now I know I never will. It's just like sitting across from that sexy man and just listening to his stories. It's great.
Tasty Read July 11, 2008
Kitchen Confidential is a series of semi-chronological biographical essays(pre-Food Network) that begins as an expose of the restaurant industry and end as an ode to the characters chef Anthony Bourdain met along the way to his dream job.
Bourdain writes with the voice of a no-nonsense cowboy proud of his exploits - the constant references to drugs, criminal activity, and the bad language may be too much for some. Despite the moral ambivalence, we meet some truly interesting characters (including Bourdain himself) and may learn something about cooking/food generally and the restaurant industry from Kitchen Confidential. Despite the 300 pages, Bourdain's conversational style makes this book a fast read.
Recommended for readers with strong stomachs looking for a rambunctious memoir of a chef and a few laughs.
Foodies Beware! July 8, 2008
I was a frequent viewer of Mr. Bourdain's program "No Reservations" on the Travel Channel so I purchased this book already knowing and loving his style as an edgy chef/traveler.
This book did not dissapoint. Bourdain reveals some of his history as a "low-life" (he would not object!) struggling to make it in the food industry. He discusses his early life as a child and later cutting his teeth in the world of food. Much of the book is Tony passing along some hilarious, and some shocking, stories of the restaurant biz during his time in the kitchen.
I recommend this book for anyone with at least a marginal love of cooking or eating. Basically everyone!
Good Book Now Even Better June 14, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
For anyone who's ever done any kind of commercial cooking this book, and it's earlier version, is a MUST read. I'm a retired line cook and I can assure all potential readers that Tony knows of what he speaks. For 'civilians', the avid home cook or the addicted restaurant patron, this clever work gives an engrossing, entertaining and sometimes scary peek behind the restaurant kitchen door. Chefs and cooks are, well, just people, but there is something special about people who want to please hundreds of anonymous diners; stay true to their own standards and achieve the respect of thier peers. As Tony says, it is one of the hardest, yet most rewarding, and crazy jobs in the 'every-day' world.
Anthony Bourdain is one of my 'cooking gods' because he specialises in classic, time-proven dishes; he knows that all the world's great food is, basically, 'peasant' food, not the titivated, sculpted, value-added 'art works' on a large white plates -- and he's a good writer. I too write -- was once a food writer and journalist -- and I know how hard it is to combine the two jobs. This work is honest, controversial yet extremely fair in its assessments of the high-pressure world of the New York and American restaurant scene, then and now. I strongly recommend that you buy this book and then graduate to Bourdain's absolutely fantastic "Les Halles" cookbook. I use it, refer to it or just fawn over it at least three times every week. With over 25 years experience under my (large) belt, his Les Halles book 're-taught' me and gave me new inspiration to take up semi-professional cooking again, just for the pure joy of producing really special, simple, dishes. Please buy all his books; Bourdain is an honest, decent and admirable cook (I hate the term 'chef').
(No I'm not Tony Bourdain!) Just a genuine fan who appreciates his sharing of a once 'hidden' and unsung profession.
William Kenneth Halliwell
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Good book June 13, 2008
This guy rocks, and his books are as good as his tv show (No Reservations).;)
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