Rating: 
Summary: Fear & Lothing in the kitchen
Review: A great mix of Hunter Thompson, P.J. O'Rourke, and Michael Moore!
A few handy hints about cooking, career paths, and drug use.
This book is less about what happens at the local eatery, than why it happens.
Rating: 
Summary: Didn't live up to the hype
Review: I thought this book would be about what-you-should-never-know-about-kitchens-and-wouldn't-ever-ask. It does have that--most of it in a single chapter. The rest of the book is really about how the author becomes a chef.
It's a readable autobiography, but if what you wanted were the skeletons in the kitchen cupboard, this is not it.
Rating:
Summary: An in-your-face first hand account of 25 yrs of cooking
Review: Bourdain doesn't bother to make friends in the conventional sense - not even with his reading audience. He is brash, confident, confrontational, and at times very unlikeable. Julia Childs this is not. However I really liked this book. It is definitely a memoir of food as well as in insider view into restaurant kitchens and subculture. It also has a handy chapter of what to order and why (never order fish on Monday's for instance)What I disliked about the book was actually what I came to like in the end - his seeminly long-winded explanations of everything. Yet the descriptions, often accompanied by many superlatives seem to add layers, or extra depth to the book. It is definitely not spare, but it suits a food-memoir. I am just reading a memoir by a New Zealand/Italian chef and it really suffers by comparison. It is spare and tries to be amusing. Bourdain doesn't care whether you laugh or not. However the book simply due to its subject matter and unapologetic stance is fascinating reading. It starts out with his learning to appreciate food during a trip to France his family took when he was young. He, by his own admission wasn't a very amenable child on the trip - insisting on hamburgers the whole way. Until he got left out of a restaurant. Then he started trying everything - simply ordering the most bizarre things he could for shock value. The desire to shock has clearly continued through his life. He sort of fell into cooking, starting out as a dishwasher in a holiday resort town - and again that very unlikeable side of him - the arrogant swaggerer was his downfall. So he went off to cooking school - the inappropriately named CIA to learn more and to show them at the restaurant he had been humiliated at just what he was worth after all! So he did become a cook, and now a chef, and that arrogance remains - in fact it seems it is what gets someone through Cooking school and to survive in kitchens - which don't sound very glamorous. At one stage he talks about one team of cooks he was with who would re-enact scenes from "Apocalypse Now" before starting cooking each night. And that to me really best sums up the kitchen scenes he describes - a battle-ground. He certainly links it with aa army mentality himself - the slang alone - if not the sheer volume of organisation involved. He even takes us through one of his days (unenviable). I wouldn't have thought it would make that great reading - lots of lists of things he has to do - but it is fascinating reading. Not the least because he writes about his mistakes as well as his triumphs. His life and career didn't carve a traditional path, but even in the periods where he was a strung-out dope fiend the writing is more about restaurants and the restaurant trade. And it is a very sharp insider view. Not that I ever wanted to be a chef, but I certainly don't want to be one now. I can't imagine Julia Child cooking in this kind of kitchen - maybe she was as foul-mouthed as they are. Bourdain does admit that not all kitchens are like his although I think maybe most of them might be. There are a lot of egos in cooking after all. However this book is more than a outing for egos. It is also a food memoir and it works very well as that. Bourdain loves food and shares his memories of favourite foods, recipes and moments well. Recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Crudites avec Crudity
Review: Far be it from me to pass judgment on someone else's sordid little past, but potential readers of Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential should be aware that along with peeking through back door of the restaurant kitchen, they'll be looking at the alley. If the sexual hijinx of unwashed bodies aren't your speed, you may want to either give this book a pass or read it selectively. If they are your speed, you'll find this book funny in spots, a cleverly-written story about one man's rise to the top through a succession of steamy little galleys and famous restaurant kitchens. Anyone interested in a career in the biz will find pages 75-105 particularly valuable. "How to Cook Like the Pros" is a quick compendium of a few tools and ingredients Bourdain considers essential to the home kitchen (he's big on shallots and butter). "Owner's Syndrome and Other Medical Anomolies" is a cautionary glance at three types of failed restaurant owners, and "Bigfoot" is a case study of one successful example of the species. The chapter entitled "So You Want to Be a Chef? A Commencement Address" (pp. 293-299) is also well worth reading. Serious "foodies" and those who want to read about the mystique or joy of food preparation and the restaurant industry will want to avoid this book, however, perhaps in favor of Ruth Reichl's Tender to the Bone or Debra Ginsberg's Waiting.
Rating:
Summary: An offbeat life story with some tips
Review: I eat in restaurants nearly everyday. I find that I don't have time to cook, and there are plenty of places in town that are cheap and good. There was a time after reading George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London that eating out brought up bad visions. It's happened once again with Anthony Bourdain's informative and often times hilarious book, Kitchen Confidential. We know that restaurants are dirtier than our own kitchens, but Bourdain explains what to look for when choosing a sanitary eating environment. He suggests that restaurant food is better during the weekdays when a chef is preparing food for what he believes to be his regular customers, whereas weekend food is for tourists and has to be rushed by the nature of the crowds. To hear Bourdain tell it, Sunday Brunch is the absolute worst time to eat anywhere, because the main chef is off and the food is mostly stale bread and other leftovers from throughout the week. The book really serves as an autobiography of how Bourdain came to be a chef and his experiences up to the present day. To hear him tell it, the kitchen is full of characters. He describes many of these nuts that have filled his life, and their exploits from past to present. Some of these people are so antisocial in Bourdain's opinion that they would be hardly functional anywhere but a kitchen. He describes a baker so doped up that he frequently missed work for a week, but he'd be welcomed back, because his bread was like no other. In the same vein, it's not an exaggeration to say the author refers to (maybe even brags about) his own ... habit at least 20 times. Bourdain does seem to have a knack for the kind of self-effacing promotion that is so popular these days with audiences. Here's a guy that is a high paid chef at a well-known restaurant, but much of the story is about his screw-ups and feeble attempts at making a living. His style is hard-hitting like a noir detective novel. You'll know after 10 pages whether you'll enjoy the book. I did.
Rating: 
Summary: A Vanity Book
Review: Some of the chapters actually provide what the book promises - a behind-the-scenes look at restaurant kitchens, but most of it is just the author desperately trying to convince his readers of what a rockstar he is. I read the chapters on the kitchens and skipped over all the other, even still I wouldn't really recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Sex, Drugs, and... Cooking!
Review: Who knew that the life of a chef was so wild? For those of you who thought that you needed to be a rock 'n roll star to live like one, Anthony Bourdain's book should dispel you of this notion. Motley Crue has got nothing on this guy. He is at least as much of a degenerate as any one of them. I expect to see a "Behind the Groceries" special on him on the Food Network any day now. This is not your typical behind-the-scenes expose of the restaurant business. Don't expect tales about improperly stored meat, or ticked off line cooks spitting in a customer's food. This is more of an autobiography, one that happens to be about someone whose entire life is consumed by the restaurant business. I spent a lot of time wondering whether this was really representative of what it's like to be a chef, or whether it was more representative of what it's like to be a junkie living in New York City who happens to make his living cooking food. I have to say, I was expecting significantly less sex than was contained in this book. Bourdain has plenty of very funny tales, but I'm not sure that they warrant 300 pages. After about the first 200, I felt like I had gotten the point: that the restaurant business is run by a bunch of borderline personalities who are at least as likely to spend tomorrow face down in a gutter as they are to show up to cook your steak. I did learn a lot about the day-to-day workings of the restaurant business, something I hadn't put a lot of thought into until now, but I'm still not entirely convinced that it's something I should care about.
Rating: 
Summary: Eye-opening
Review: I borrowed a copy of this between novels and must say I truly enjoyed it. It was a rather eye-opening account of the world of cooking (Bourdain's world anyway). It was well written and held my attention. I would recommend young chefs in training pick up a copy. Though Bourdain's way to success is not the common way, it sure has been quite a ride so far. Since reading this, my view point of the cooking field has changed somewhat. When going into restaurants now, I find myself trying to sneak a peak into the kitchen to see if I can see any 'hijinks in progress'. Recommended
Rating:
Summary: Good Book for Cooking Lovers
Review: If you love to cook or love anything that deals with cooking or food...this book is for you. :)
Rating:
Summary: A bit of cooking, a lot of drugs, and HORRIBLE editing.
Review: While Anthony Burdain's Kitchen Confidential does offer a few helpful hints into "the culinary underbelly" it would certainly be more appropriately titled, "What happens to cocaine-addicted chefs". The novel dwells on the author's tainted past and its influence on his struggle (and I mean struggle) into culinary mediocrity. Perhaps the editor of this novel was ALSO strung out on crack when he read over the manuscript. After explicitly telling the reader how to use squeeze bottles and metal rings to jazz up ordinary cuisine, Bourdain then goes on to compain about and rip apart chefs who use these techniques. Aside from being almost entirely contradictory, the diction of this novel is lacking. Bourdain often repeats the same phrases over and over in different chapters as though it is brand new and fresh (Bourdain also uses the term 'moribund' about five hundred times). He then uses culinary jargon with the expectation that EVERYONE should know these terms by heart. Bourdain's introduction of new characters is incredibly poor (half way through he vaguely mentions the presence of a girlfriend, then a few chapters later a wife, FINALLY referring to her as "Nancy" on page 183). Needless to say, Anthony Bourdain should NOT quit his day-job to pursue life as a novelist, but SHOULD, in fact, quit his day-job for the sake of poor 'foodies' who may cross his path in the future.
| 
