books

                                                       

                                   kitchen confidential

Chef, author, and raconteur Anthony Bourdain is best known for traveling the globe on his TV show Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. Somewhat notoriously, he has established himself as a professional gadfly, bête noir, advocate, social critic, and pork enthusiast, recognized for his caustic sense of humor worldwide. He is as unsparing of those things he hates, as he is evangelical about his passions. Bourdain is the author of the New York Times bestselling Kitchen Confidential and Medium Raw; A Cook’s Tour; the collection The Nasty Bits; the novels Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo; the biography Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical; two graphic novels, Get Jiro! and Get Jiro!: Blood and Sushi and his latest New York Times bestselling cookbook Appetites. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Times of London, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Vanity Fair, Lucky Peach and many other publications. In 2013, Bourdain launched his own publishing line with Ecco, Anthony Bourdain Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. He is the host of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning docuseries Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown on CNN, and before that hosted Emmy award-winning No Reservations and The Layover on Travel Channel, and The Taste on ABC.

                                                          “Kitchen Confidential"

 is the book that made Anthony Bourdain and, after two decades, it holds up extremely well. Bourdian offers insights on what happens in the kitchen and what drove him to become a chef. He presents am engaging and sometimes funny look at his early experiences with restaurants, their owners, staffs and even takes readers behind the scenes with his own life. This is a very different Bourdian than the one who pops up on CNN these days, far less mature and worldly and more profane. Regardless, fans will appreciate “Kitchen Confidential” and Bourdian’s writing--easily one of the strengths that has kept him on TV for most of the last decade and a half--helps move readers along and offers a memorable impression. Highly recommended.

I liked the muscular way he writes about food and I fully share his view that prissy concoctions of food with way too many ingredients that only stroke a chef's vanity have nothing to do with first class cooking. As he rightly points out, great cooking, as always, involves only the finest and freshest ingredients presented to their greatest advantage where less is more. As any artist will tell you, if you mix up all the colors of the pallet, the result will always be a muddy black.

GREAT book! I couldn't put it down. Having been in food service most of my life, I'm only 26yrs old and feel like I've already been exposed to it all. After reading this...not even close. Anthony never goes far beyond the truth of spending his time in a kitchen. Explaining each and every detail about his experiences from culinary school all the way to executive chef running his own restaurant. There's definitely some evil out there, but also many rewards. He tells it how it is. There's plenty of spoilers in this book including talk about what kinds of knives to use, kitchen equipment and about how to improve upon your own skills as a chef, restaurant employee or even an owner. However, this is really a story--not business for dummies. He's done a great job here.