Rating: 
Summary: Buy this book now
Review: This book is great. Buy it. Read it. Enjoy it.If you have ever been in the food service industry, you will love this book. If you truly love cooking, you will love this book. If you want honest, witty, and inteligent writing, you want this book. A great gift too.
Rating: 
Summary: Kitchen Confidential
Review: I really disliked this book. Redundant, distasteful and adolescent. In one paragragh the author is talking about a class on beef he attended at the Culinary Institute of America and says '...we were the culinary version of the Manson family. Fortunately, the mutilated reamins of our efforts were -as was all food at CIA - simply passed along to another class. Crude and boring sexual comments abound. The author's narcissism is tiresome.
Rating:
Summary: NOT TO MY TASTE
Review: For someone in a career that caters to the public, Chef Bourdain certainly seems to dislike a lot of people. He ridicules many of his customers, his employers and his fellow chefs. I got tired of his macho-strutting; his swearing; his constant references to drugs and sex. Yes, I learned some things about what goes on behind the scenes in some of the NY restaurants, but it wasn't worth the price of the book.
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Summary: Peek into hell's kitchen....
Review: I read Anthony Bourdain's hilarious article in THE NEW YORKER magazine last year and couldn't wait to read more about his years spent in the bowels of some of New York's finest restaurants. KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL did not disappoint. I laughed all the way through the book and learned a lot along the way. Think Hunter Thompson, drugs and all, writing about the restaurant business. I learned that running a restaurant is not for the faint of heart. Just hauling all the bloody meat carcasses around would be enough to turn your stomach. Learning to carve the beef, fish, poultry and lamb would put me off the job right away. The pressure of turning out 600+ dinners in an evening is daunting. Paying the bills, keeping the nut-case employees happy, knowing which Italian family currently controls disposal of waste, and trying to stay on top of the ever changing and always fickle American palette is enough to make anyone's head spin. The leveling factor, or so it seems, is chemicals -- and lots of them. I don't think Bourdain has drawn a completely sober breath since he first stepped into a commercial kitchen at the Dreadnaught in Provincetown, Cape Cod. When they weren't drinking up profits from the Dreadnaught's bar, they were high on coke, LSD, mushrooms laced with honey, and finally, heroin. As Bourdain explains: So who the hell, exactly, ARE these guys, the boys and girls in the trenches? You might get the impression from the specifics of MY less than stellar career that all line cooks are wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts and psychopaths. You wouldn't be too far off base. After reading this riotous tale, I've made some changes in my dining out behaviors. I will not eat fish on Mondays. I won't "do brunch." I will schedule my dining excursions for weekdays, not weekends. I will never order anything well done and I won't insult the chef by asking for sauce "on the side." I will sit at the bar and watch what comes out of the kitchen before ordering. I will skip lunch and save my appetite for dinner. Also, on my next trip to New York, I will make reservations Bourdain's restaurant, Brasserie Les Halles...for Tuesday night, of course! If you want to know WHY I've changed my routines, read this book. You'll learn some interesting facts and chances are, you'll laugh a lot during the process. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous
Review: If I wasn't good friends with the pastry chef at Le Cirque, I never would have believed a word of it. As it is, I think it a wonderful book that is entertaining, and NOT some food expose'. If you want to know how a New York kitchen works, read it.
Rating:
Summary: " A Passion For The Disease"
Review: When I decided to become a follower in this industry there were three things I vowed: 1) Not to become an alcholic, 2) Not to become a drug addict, 3) If I married, that it would survive. #1 and #2 some how are in place, but #3 I am a casaulty. You work when people are playing, you play when people are sleeping, and just maybe, you get some sleep before you do it all over again! The chapter "A day in the life" tells the truth of what it is all about, no matter how big or small the operation is. "his heart sunk"; when the waiter did not know what proscuitto was! This truly is painful. It is painful when those in the real world of the buisness don't understand what it means when it is said "what ever it takes" Thank you Chef!
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Summary: Guess who's not coming to dinner ....
Review: I bought this book based on an interesting outline and a number of enthusiastic reviews, but it was a real struggle to finish. I kept waiting for something to happen, anything to happen,that was either interesting, amusing or instructive, but it never did. The book is little more than a meandering stream-of-consciousness rambling by a self-important, self-indulgent egocentric 70s flower child ...While these may be good atributes for a chef, ...they don't make for a good writer. For those interested in more factual books, try "The Making of a Chef" by Michael Ruhlmann.
Rating:
Summary: Eat Out? READ THIS BOOK!
Review: From the moment I picked up this book (lent to me by a friend who actaually attended the CIA like the author...), I could not put it down. I am a self-professed "foodie" and the humour, insights, "tales from the dark side" and general pace of the book kept me coming back for more. A fascinating book that will gross you out (never eat fish on Tuesday, stay away from Hollandais sauce at a buffet...), educate you (which knives to choose in a well-stocked kitchen) and entertain you (what the "waitrons" really think of you and why you shouldn't care!) In between, the book is seasoned to perfection with raucous tales of what goes on behind those swinging doors (a whole lot of swinging!). Since reading the book, I look at dining out in a whole new light---sometimes with more respect and admiration (for the chef, the sous chef and staff)and sometimes with a lot less (restaurant owners, some suppliers, some wait staff.) You will never look at a basket of bread at a restaurant in the same way again. This book ignited a smoldering fascination with food for me (I am proud to say I am a "foodie" now!) and I am also proud to say that even though I know the dangers of eating at a street vender's stand in NYC or in downtown Guatemala City---I still have done it and will continue to do it. Food is above all an adventure---something that this book extoles.
Rating:
Summary: This Has It All!
Review: A laugh-out-loud book that will not only entertain --It will inform, amuse, caution and instruct. Full of the most outrageous experiences -- Truly a look at this side of the restaurant business one would never suspect! The man can write!!! Enjoyed it so much that I obtained and read his other three books -- also good reads. Read it! You won't be sorry!
Rating: 
Summary: Hyperbole and aggrandisement make for a fairly weak broth
Review: Anthony Bourdain clearly wishes that he was a rock and roll star--a little too much. He is self indulgent in his description of his training and apprenticeship in the kitchen. Most disappointing is that the bulk of the book stays rather distant from what the focus of a chef's life should be: the food. Does Bourdain even like food? Other than his reminiscence of sensuous experiences as a child and recounting a brief journey to Japan, the book is bereft of any embrace of the ingredients of his alleged craft. It is obvious that Bourdain is not really a quality chef. He is a yeoman, at best. His focus on food cost, profit, and the number of four tops he has turned demonstrates that Bourdain would be more comfortable in the kitchen of a local TGI Fridays than a top dining room.
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