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| Kitchen Confidential Updated Ed: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.) | 
 enlarge | Author: Anthony Bourdain
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $6.99
You Save: $7.96 (53%)
New (56) Used (42) Collectible (1) from $5.30
Avg. Customer Rating:  574 reviews
Sales Rank: 527
Media: Paperback
Edition: Updated
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0060899220
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5092
EAN: 9780060899226
ASIN: 0060899220
Publication Date: January 9, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Thank you for looking at Bookscorner1. May have shelf wear and remainder mark.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Maybe I don't want to go out to dinner tionight! July 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I loved this book. I am a fan of his show so the words in this book came out sounding a lot like Anthony's voice. Great stories, great restaurant insight. I thought I wanted my son to go to culinary school and be a chef, but now I think I have changed my mind! This book is totally entertaining, especially if you are a foodie.
Kitchen confidential July 22, 2008
Great book lots of good info. I don't go to buffets and now I know I never will. It's just like sitting across from that sexy man and just listening to his stories. It's great.
Tasty Read July 11, 2008
Kitchen Confidential is a series of semi-chronological biographical essays(pre-Food Network) that begins as an expose of the restaurant industry and end as an ode to the characters chef Anthony Bourdain met along the way to his dream job.
Bourdain writes with the voice of a no-nonsense cowboy proud of his exploits - the constant references to drugs, criminal activity, and the bad language may be too much for some. Despite the moral ambivalence, we meet some truly interesting characters (including Bourdain himself) and may learn something about cooking/food generally and the restaurant industry from Kitchen Confidential. Despite the 300 pages, Bourdain's conversational style makes this book a fast read.
Recommended for readers with strong stomachs looking for a rambunctious memoir of a chef and a few laughs.
Foodies Beware! July 8, 2008
I was a frequent viewer of Mr. Bourdain's program "No Reservations" on the Travel Channel so I purchased this book already knowing and loving his style as an edgy chef/traveler.
This book did not dissapoint. Bourdain reveals some of his history as a "low-life" (he would not object!) struggling to make it in the food industry. He discusses his early life as a child and later cutting his teeth in the world of food. Much of the book is Tony passing along some hilarious, and some shocking, stories of the restaurant biz during his time in the kitchen.
I recommend this book for anyone with at least a marginal love of cooking or eating. Basically everyone!
Good Book Now Even Better June 14, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
For anyone who's ever done any kind of commercial cooking this book, and it's earlier version, is a MUST read. I'm a retired line cook and I can assure all potential readers that Tony knows of what he speaks. For 'civilians', the avid home cook or the addicted restaurant patron, this clever work gives an engrossing, entertaining and sometimes scary peek behind the restaurant kitchen door. Chefs and cooks are, well, just people, but there is something special about people who want to please hundreds of anonymous diners; stay true to their own standards and achieve the respect of thier peers. As Tony says, it is one of the hardest, yet most rewarding, and crazy jobs in the 'every-day' world.
Anthony Bourdain is one of my 'cooking gods' because he specialises in classic, time-proven dishes; he knows that all the world's great food is, basically, 'peasant' food, not the titivated, sculpted, value-added 'art works' on a large white plates -- and he's a good writer. I too write -- was once a food writer and journalist -- and I know how hard it is to combine the two jobs. This work is honest, controversial yet extremely fair in its assessments of the high-pressure world of the New York and American restaurant scene, then and now. I strongly recommend that you buy this book and then graduate to Bourdain's absolutely fantastic "Les Halles" cookbook. I use it, refer to it or just fawn over it at least three times every week. With over 25 years experience under my (large) belt, his Les Halles book 're-taught' me and gave me new inspiration to take up semi-professional cooking again, just for the pure joy of producing really special, simple, dishes. Please buy all his books; Bourdain is an honest, decent and admirable cook (I hate the term 'chef').
(No I'm not Tony Bourdain!) Just a genuine fan who appreciates his sharing of a once 'hidden' and unsung profession.
William Kenneth Halliwell
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
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