Product Description

When Chef Anthony Bourdain wrote "Don't Eat Before You Read This" in The New Yorker, he spared no one's appetite, revealing what goes on behind the kitchen door. In Kitchen Confidential, he expanded the appetizer into a deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet that lays out his twenty-five years of sex, drugs, and haute cuisine.

From his first oyster in Gironda to the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, from the restaurants of Tokyo to the drug dealers of the East Village, from the mobsters to the rats, Bourdain's brilliantly written and wonderfully read, wild-but-true tales make the belly ache with laughter.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #320228 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-11
• Released on: 2005-10-11
• Formats: Audiobook, Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio CD

From 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

From Publishers Weekly
Chef at New York's Les Halles and author of Bone in the Throat, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business. His fast-lane personality and glee in recounting sophomoric kitchen pranks might be unbearable were it not for two things: Bourdain is as unsparingly acerbic with himself as he is with others, and he exhibits a sincere and profound love of good food. The latter was born on a family trip to France when young Bourdain tasted his first oyster, and his love has only grown since. He has attended culinary school, fallen prey to a drug habit and even established a restaurant in Tokyo, discovering along the way that the crazy, dirty, sometimes frightening world of the restaurant kitchen sustains him. Bourdain is no presentable TV version of a chef; he talks tough and dirty. His advice to aspiring chefs: "Show up at work on time six months in a row and we'll talk about red curry paste and lemon grass. Until then, I have four words for you: 'Shut the fuck up.' " He disdains vegetarians, warns against ordering food well done and cautions that restaurant brunches are a crapshoot. Gossipy chapters discuss the many restaurants where Bourdain has worked, while a single chapter on how to cook like a professional at home exhorts readers to buy a few simple gadgets, such as a metal ring for tall food. Most of the book, however, deals with Bourdain's own maturation as a chef, and the culmination, a litany describing the many scars and oddities that he has developed on his hands, is surprisingly beautiful. He'd probably hate to hear it, but Bourdain has a tender side, and when it peeks through his rough exterior and the wall of four-letter words he constructs, it elevates this book to something more than blustery memoir. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
If you've ever wondered how that boeuf en croute got to your restaurant table, this tape tells all. At warp speed, reflecting his high-energy personality, Bourdain covers chef's training, personalities, food prep, cooks' lifestyles (boozy and erratic), his own history (druggy), and the art of running a successful restaurant. He doesn't stint on the gritty details or the four-letter words, so be prepared. His French pronunciation is surprisingly poor for someone who has lived in France, but his Spanish (highly recommended for communicating with the kitchen help) sounds ok. Presently the executive chef at Brassierie Les Halles in New York City, Bourdain delivers his description of one busy dinner hour at the frenetic pace required for survival there. Give this one a taste; you'll be amused, educated, maybe a little horrified, but never bored. J.B.G. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Learn more about restaurants than you will even want to know
Kitchen Confidential is a great book but be warned, if you have a glamourous view of restaurants, you won't after this. This book truly tells how a restaurant works and Anthony Bourdain's story is very compelling. He's also a great writer which also helps the book. I strongly recommend it. Anybody who likes this book should also read The Nasty Bits. It's also a great book.

Entertaining!
As a Bourdain fan for years I will admit to being a little biased, but I found this book a very entertaining look inside kitchens and the food service business. I felt like Bourdain was talking to me, I found his style of writing to be very personable and like he was having a conversation with you. I gave it 4 stars only because I found the management of the chapters and sections to be a little fragmented and slightly confusing as he goes back and forth in time and thought all throughout the book. If you were/are a fan of "A Cook's Tour" and "No Reservations" - get this book, you will love it.

The great art of being Bourdain
Although not quite the "sex drugs and rock & roll of the restaurant business" that it is hyped to be, Kitchen Confidential is still an intriguing look at a world that most of us don't even think about - the kitchens of the world's great restaurants. I thought Bourdain was a good writer, and I also felt he did a great job of explaining who those people are that work in restaurants.

However, as a vegetarian, I have some issues with Bourdain. Around page 70 he writes the following:
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Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.
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He then goes on to explain why vegetarians are sickly (we're not) and why our health concerns are silly (they're not). He also writes a few things which show him to be a classic example of those who refuse to make the connection between animals and food (something a chef should be willing to do).
Regarding chickens, he writes:
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Pigs are filthy animals, say some, when explaining why they deny themselves the delights of pork. Maybe they should visit a chicken ranch. America's favourite menu item is also the most likely to make you ill. Commercially available chickens, for the most part (we're not talking about kosher and expensive free-range birds), are loaded with salmonella. Chickens are dirty. They eat their own feces, are kept packed close together like in a rush-hour subway, and when handled in a restaurant situation are most likely to infect other foods or cross-contaminate them.
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Regarding foie gras (the production of which has been banned in England and California and many other areas because it is just so grotesquely immoral):
I don't know who figured out that if you crammed rich food into a goose long enough for its liver to balloon up to more than its normal body weight you'd get something as good as foie gras - I believe it was those kooky Romans - but I'm very grateful for their efforts.
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Come on Anthony, what you're describing here is the torture of chickens and geese. And you can describe this and then only make the following conclusions? a) People who dislike pork should see how CHICKENS are raised! and b) Force-feeding geese so that their bodies swell hideously is yummy!

Come on dude. Put two and two together.