Rating: 
Summary: Very quick read - but not for the tame at heart.
Review: This is a great book for foodies, cooks, and especially cook wannabe's. Bourdain's writing style is very colorful and makes for an entertaining, quick read.One caveat, it may change (make that "should change") the way you eat in restaurants (ie - it ain't always pretty).
Rating: 
Summary: Never Eat Fish on Monday!
Review: Anyone who likes to eat out, read this book first.
My dining out will never be the same. I had no idea
that they took the bread that was not used at another
table to another table. This book was very, very good.
It will grab you from the first word and you never
let go until the end. I can not wait to read a Cooks
Tour and watch his new show on the Food Network, he
has me hooked.
Rating: 
Summary: Really enjoyed this book
Review: Other than the drive thur of Popeye's in High School I have never worked in or around the food service industry. This book was still interesting to me (maybe more so because of that fact.
Rating:
Summary: Foodie Must Read
Review: Fascinating and horrifying, Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential is actually mostly entertaining. In this autobiographical work, Bourdain recounts seminal experiences in his career as a chef, all the way from an inadequate newbie line cook at a sea shanty restaurant to helping open Les Halles in Tokyo. The hardest part I found in reading this book, was dealing with my judgments of him and the industry at large as he paints it. He is clear from the beginning that (a) his book was only intended for others in the industry and (b) the industry, in his experience, is comprised of antisocial misfits. The experiences he describes here as having molded his personality, and which continue to mold his kitchens, make the book so amusing and both his individual character and the restaurant business at large so difficult to swallow. Fortunately, he does present, in a very well written chapter, a counterpoint description of a fellow, yet civilized, chef's kitchen and restaurant. If your the least bit interested or experienced in restaurant dining, this is a must read: an insider's narrative of a world most of us only visit for a few hours at a time.
Rating:
Summary: Delicious, entertaining and brutally informative. Mange!!!
Review: The author warns, "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 favor 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." Anthony Bourdain has lead quite a life, and retells some of his adventures in frank, vivid detail. This book is full of fact, gossip and inside views of a sub-culture most of us will never experience, yet sit just on the outskirts of, on the other side of those swinging kitchen doors. It touches us, but we cannot touch back. This is a rare treat. From defiantly slurping down his first raw oyster as a child, through CIA education, to working in New York's hot spots, cooking for celebrities, Anthony Bourdain candidly exposes some of the seedier elements of the restaurant business. He speaks of sex in the storage rooms, backseat negotiations over bread delivery with shady businessmen (presumably mafia), ego-induced insanity and down-and-out genius. He gives us some food for thought, lets us in on the odd sense of humor shared in most of the kitchens he has worked in, and occasionally shocks us with things we may not have wanted to know, but we read on, swallowing every juicy tidbit hungrily. It reminds one of watching a car wreck victim be loaded onto a stretcher, we try not to, but we continue to stare transfixed, wincing all the while. He describes most restaurant staff as "wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, ... , and psychopaths," with a cast like that, how can any story fail to entertain? At one restaurant the crew spent slow hours coming up with practical jokes to play on the unsuspecting front room staff and management, such as molding life-like severed fingers from various food products and leaving them around in freezers and on cutting boards. It is not all lurid amusement, however. He does manage to sneak in some wonderful recipes, along with very good advice (what knives are really worth owning, for example) for casual cooks, would-be professional chefs and potential restaurant owners. If you don't have a weak stomach, enjoy cooking, eating, laughing and/or general debauchery, this book is bound to have you hooked from page one. Also, if you enjoy listening rather than (or as well as) reading, look for the audio book, read by the author. His delivery adds something rich and spicy to the already wonderfully satisfying feast of words. It had me looking forward to my commute, just so I could hear how Chef Bourdain would garnish the next course with his own inflection and undeniably charming "gruff New Yorker" attitude.
Rating:
Summary: The Culinary Keith Richards
Review: BAM!!!! A great read, somewhat chaotic, the pacing suffers at times probably the fault of the editor not the author. The reference on the jacket to Hunter S. Thompson sucked me in. The author didn'tlet me down. Lots of drug use and name dropping. Mr. Tony is a real survivor. At times the stories seemed to blur into each other, such as author gets a job calls his friends to work with him does lots of drugs, drinks to much quits or gets fired, variations of this happen repeatedly. I was disappointed that he didn't offer up some sexcapeds but since he's a married man he must have taken taken the PC route and either the drugs created some form of impotence or he's protecting the reputation of NYC's waitresses which I doubt or he doesn't wish to split his next advance with a divorce lawyer. Definatly not a kiss and tell expose. Also I would hope Tony changed the names to protect his friends and/or exemployers if not he should probably watch where he eats. I do find it very ironic that after all the abuse Tony heaps on his peers such as emeril ect.. that now he's going to have his own show on the food channel. But hey theirs alot worse [stuff] you could be reading.
Rating:
Summary: Fear and Loathing in the Kitchen
Review: Bourdain's engaging prose and often hilarious narrative make this a very enjoyable read for all, especially those who love to cook, eat out, or ever dreamt of being a chef. I found the book to be less "shocking" than it was hyped to be, but I was not disappointed in its contents. Bourdain may offend a few folks with his frank, if not (at times) crass, narrative, but I think that most will enjoy this book on some level. I can't say how true his account of a professional kitchen rings, although I suspect the world he describes more accurately depicts New York City than the rest of the country.
It's ironic that Bourdain is somewhat disdainful of the celebrity chefs who appear on the food network and write fancy cookbooks, but he apparently lept at the opportunity to do his own show. While I haven't seen it, the commercials looks like his chapter on eating in Japan- where he lauds the eating of foods bizzarre and exotic to the western palette- "extreme cuisine," in today's commercial parlance. This isn't a book I would keep on my shelves and return to it time and again, But it's one of those great books you blast through once and then pass on to a friend, who thanks you for it and passes it to another.
Rating:
Summary: If you are in the biz, you know.
Review: I read this book while taking the train every day to Culinary School and the restaurant. The other riders would hear me laugh out loud at the right on descriptions of those I worked with. I could see just about everything that Chef Bourdain would speak of. The managerie of semi-criminals working behind the line, the fanatical Chefs who command absolute loyalty from those in their charge, the idiosyncrasies and chemical experimentation to deal with the stress of putting out dish after dish, this is not fiction!! The spit-shine and polished TV chefs look good on the screen, but when they are behind the line, the yelling, the profanity, many times in as many different languages as there are ingredients on a plate, they become as real as you fear. It was nice to see someone who knew the life, the industry, and what we go through to feed the public. I have had this book for quite a while now, and have reread it many times, I still laugh out loud.
Rating:
Summary: Cooks Rule
Review: Without question this is the first book that truly explains what degenerates that cooks truly are. As a 15 year veteran of many kitchens, I can honestly say that Bourdain has nailed what many of us always knew, cooks rule. As Bourdain described the cooks of the dreadnaught, where I worked by the way....not the dreadnaught, but a kitchen damn near the exact same...."They drank everything in sight, stole anything that wasn't nailed down [...] God help me, but that's us. Cooks rule.
Rating:
Summary: adventures in reading about cooking
Review: Scary, funny, sad and magical.
Shades of Hunter Thompson as a foodie,
professional cooking, realistic, sacred and profound, yet scatalogical.
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