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Binding: Hardcover Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5092 EAN: 9781582340821 ISBN: 158234082X Label: Bloomsbury USA Manufacturer: Bloomsbury USA Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 288 Publication Date: May 22, 2000 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Studio: Bloomsbury USA Sales Rank: 11991
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
Average Rating:
Rating: - Fiendishly delightful
By all accounts, this should be a lousy book. The life story of a middle-aged, former substance-abusing, self-described SOB and good-but-not-great chef. In the hands of most people, this would be a rambling, ... Read More
Rating: - Entertaining, Hyperbole or Not
Whether or not this account is 100% factual, it IS 100% entertaining, provided one has the stomach for such debauchery. Sure, there's a bit of "Hey, look at me!" but it takes a healthy share of that to even bother ... Read More
Rating: - Fun, but no "must read" for aspiring chefs
When I started culinary school, I was told that this book was a "must read" for anyone who wanted to be a chef. I bought it, but never read it. Finally, this year, I decided to bust through it. While it is fairly enjoyable, ... Read More
Rating: - An interesting read
Anthony Bourdain is sort of a cynical character and portrays this dark, drug infested culinary life. I think he is a little jaded and not all kitchens are like the ones he worked in. Some are though. It was a good read (not ... Read More
Rating: - Witty, Sarcastic, and Honest
He had me at "preface".
I haven't actually finished reading it so this review may be premature. Immediately after I started the book, I began to read passages outloud to my boyfriend who gifted this book. If this ... Read More
- Entertaining, Hyperbole or Not
- Fun, but no "must read" for aspiring chefs