Kitchen Confidential

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After twenty-five years of 'sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine', chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain has decided to tell all. From his first oyster in the Gironde to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he first experiences the real delights of being a chef); from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop the Rockefeller Center to drug dealers in the East Village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable, as shocking as they are funny. This unforgettable book will change the way you view restaurants for ever.

Product details

Published
03/12/2001

Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

ISBN
9780747559849

Publisher and industry reviews

Jacket review

'It's not exactly Delia' GUARDIAN 'Fantastic: as lip-smackingly seductive as a bowl of fat chips and pungent aioli' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Exposes Jamie Oliver for the choirboy that he is' GLASGOW HERALD 'Extraordinary - written with a clarity and a clear-eyed wit to put the professional food-writing fraternity to shame' OBSERVER

UK Kirkus review

For those used to the gentle offerings of Delia or Nigella, this book may come as something of a surprise. Bourdain's memoirs of his rise to the middle ranks of the chef's world echo Michael Herr's war classic Despatches more than anything our gentle ladies of the kitchen can offer. Bourdain rose from a foot soldier to regimental sergeant major - he's still at the sharp end, but now he's kicking backsides and barking orders in the close, intensely macho world of the restaurant kitchen. We follow him from his first stirrings of a genuine love for food, his first oyster and his first realization of the joys of sensuousness. His early days were not easy, hindered by his own stupidity and by his heroin addiction - perhaps one of the reasons he didn't make it to the world of the TV chef. Restaurants that go bust, kitchens full of illegal immigrants and amphetamine and testosterone-fuelled nights amongst the flames and tempered steel are par for the course, backstage on a busy hot night in a New York eaterie. And your nights in any such establishment will become a double-edged affair. Bourdain's love for his work, and for food especially, floods through his words with an earthy relish. It is neither dainty prose nor dainty food, it is bloody, rich and ripe with flavour. On the other hand, his tales of the more dubious practices in kitchens will put you off for life. Chef's squirting blood from their knife-cuts onto the plate, reasons why you should never eat fish on a Monday (it's been there since Friday) and why you should never, ever order mussels will all easily explain that queasy feeling after your last blow-out. Bordain reads his own muscular prose with somewhere near the skill he shows with a pan. (Kirkus UK)