Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

by Anthony Bourdain

• ISBN10: 0060899220
• ISBN13: 9780060899226
• Publish Date: 1 January 2007 (first published 31 May 2000)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers
• Edition: Updated ed.
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[adamfortuna]

Anthony Bourdain is someone I could watch do anything. He was so entertaining and captivating that it was hard to turn away. Kitchen Confidential is no different, even if the subject is the dark underbelly of being a chef.

[jnkay01]

A weirdly excellent manifesto about leadership and surviving office life. Which was almost certainly unintentional, but certainly would make it a brilliant addition to business management syllabi.

[empressbrooke]

I found this book to be mildly amusing, although it suffered from not having much focus. It sort of whips back and forth between topics with no discernible plan - one chapter is about Bourdain's childhood discovery of how great food can be, and then suddenly he's talking about what tools an amateur cook can use to impress friends, and then it's another walk down memory lane, and then he's praising a fellow chef, and then talking about his trip to Tokyo. It's like he had all these little anecdotes he wanted to share and just sort of slapped them together with some Emeril bashing for glue.

[Terri M. LeBlanc]

I really enjoyed this memoir. It's straight shooting and a little raunchy, but if you've seen Bourdain on No Reservations, you know what to expect from his narration on the show. The memoir reads the same way.