Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly: Anthony Bourdain: 9780060934910: Amazon.com: Books

231 of 244 people found the following review helpful

By A Customer on November 2, 2000

Format: Hardcover

In this book, Anthony Bourdain, executive chef at New York's Brasserie Les Halles, takes us on a wild ride through that city's food supply industry that includes surprises such as heavy drinking, drugs, debauchery, Mafiosi and assorted seedy personalities.

Kitchen Confidential is a surprisingly well-written account of what life is really like in the commercial kitchens of the United States; the dark recesses of the restaurant underbelly. In describing these dark recesses, Bourdain refreshingly casts as many stones at himself as he does at others. In fact, he is brutally honest. There is nothing as tiresome as a tell-all book in which the author relentlessly paints himself as the unwitting victim. Bourdain, to his enormous credit, avoids this trap. Maybe he writes so convincingly about drugs and alcohol because drugs and alcohol have run their course through his veins as well as those of others.

The rather raunchy pirate ship stories contained in this fascinating but testosterone-rich book help to bring it vividly to life and add tremendous credibility. The book does tend to discourage any would-be female chefs who might read it, but that's not Bourdain's fault; he is simply telling it like it is and telling it hilariously as well. Read more