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Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (updated edition)
by Anthony Bourdain

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33313.Kitchen_Confidential_Adventures_in_the_Culinary_Underbelly?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (updated edition)" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1168422043m/33313.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33313.Kitchen_Confidential_Adventures_in_the_Culinary_Underbelly?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1124.Anthony_Bourdain">Anthony Bourdain</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5489572?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>At this point, with his television show, and all the attention he generates in the press, Anthony Bourdain has achieved a kind of celebrity that few chefs have attained. His reputation has not been established so much by his cooking as by this irreverent and hilarious book. Like David Sedaris, Anthony Bourdain has a unique no-nonsense style, a clear and distinct writing style, and he has the ability to sum up important or interesting observations about the world in single pithy sentences. One of the great things about this book is that it is full of such moments, and I can say after having been raised by a chef, and having worked ten years in the food service industry, that most kitchens work exactly in the way that Bourdain describes them. It is really a laserclear portrayal of what it is like to work in the average restaurant kitchen – far better than the absurd world that one finds on Hell's Kitchen or other similar "reality" shows. Since I read the book I often think about the rite of passage that the formally blue attired chef had at his first job in Provincetown (One of my hometowns - I may have actually eaten at the restaurant when Anthony was there), the character of Adam, and the alleged secret of cooking pasta. And although I disagree with Bourdain on several points, in general I find his recommendations on how to cook food, what equipment to use, and how to work in a kitchen to be quite sound. A further feature of the book is that although he can be irreverently funny, he obviously treats food and cooking with a great deal of respect: from his time growing up in the south of France, to his observations of what makes Alain Ducasse and his pupils such great chefs. I would recommend this book to anyone going into the food service industry, to people who like Sedaris, and to people interested in the movie Ratatouille: Bourdain was consulted during that movie, and although the recipes in the movie show the obvious hand of Thomas Keller, some of the dialogue was right out of this book.
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/150198?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

John's review
rating:
bookshelves: favorites
recommended for: anyone going into the food service industry, and anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant

At this point, with his television show, and all the attention he generates in the press, Anthony Bourdain has achieved a kind of celebrity that few chefs have attained. His reputation has not been established so much by his cooking as by this irreverent and hilarious book. Like David Sedaris, Anthony Bourdain has a unique no-nonsense style, a clear and distinct writing style, and he has the ability to sum up important or interesting observations about the world in single pithy sentences. One of the great things about this book is that it is full of such moments, and I can say after having been raised by a chef, and having worked ten years in the food service industry, that most kitchens work exactly in the way that Bourdain describes them. It is really a laserclear portrayal of what it is like to work in the average restaurant kitchen – far better than the absurd world that one finds on Hell's Kitchen or other similar "reality" shows. Since I read the book I often think ab...more At this point, with his television show, and all the attention he generates in the press, Anthony Bourdain has achieved a kind of celebrity that few chefs have attained. His reputation has not been established so much by his cooking as by this irreverent and hilarious book. Like David Sedaris, Anthony Bourdain has a unique no-nonsense style, a clear and distinct writing style, and he has the ability to sum up important or interesting observations about the world in single pithy sentences. One of the great things about this book is that it is full of such moments, and I can say after having been raised by a chef, and having worked ten years in the food service industry, that most kitchens work exactly in the way that Bourdain describes them. It is really a laserclear portrayal of what it is like to work in the average restaurant kitchen – far better than the absurd world that one finds on Hell's Kitchen or other similar "reality" shows. Since I read the book I often think about the rite of passage that the formally blue attired chef had at his first job in Provincetown (One of my hometowns - I may have actually eaten at the restaurant when Anthony was there), the character of Adam, and the alleged secret of cooking pasta. And although I disagree with Bourdain on several points, in general I find his recommendations on how to cook food, what equipment to use, and how to work in a kitchen to be quite sound. A further feature of the book is that although he can be irreverently funny, he obviously treats food and cooking with a great deal of respect: from his time growing up in the south of France, to his observations of what makes Alain Ducasse and his pupils such great chefs. I would recommend this book to anyone going into the food service industry, to people who like Sedaris, and to people interested in the movie Ratatouille: Bourdain was consulted during that movie, and although the recipes in the movie show the obvious hand of Thomas Keller, some of the dialogue was right out of this book....less

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