Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Hardcover

Bourdain, Anthony

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 158234082X ISBN 13: 9781582340821

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2000

Synopsis

New York chef Tony Bourdain gives away secrets of the trade in his wickedly funny, inspiring memoir and expos. From his first oyster in the Gironde to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky-tonk, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable. "Kitchen Confidential" reveals what Bourdain calls "25 years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine".

About this title

Review:

Kitchen Confidential is for diners who 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, 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.

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 favour 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

Review:

"Bourdain describes the restaurant subculture with swaggering style. But his greatest asset here is his voice: a committed smoker's voice," -- The Daily Telegraph, June 22nd 2002

'He didn't invent the laughing-and-barfing genre, but it's a dish he does exquisitely' -- Gaurdian, January 26th, 2002

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 158234082X
• ISBN 13: 9781582340821
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320