Rating: 
Summary: Truth in the kitchen
Review: I highly recommend Bourdain's book to anyone genuinely curious about what goes on in the kitchens of those restaurants you love. Be forewarned though - this is no culinary fairytale. Its the straight dope, albeit but one opinion, on how a dozen prepare nightly meals for 200 or more. But remember friend, true love is not a fairytale. Its believing that a thing, even while knowing all its faults, is worthy of our time and passion. And in the end, this is I believe what Bourdain shows us of professional cuisine.
Rating: 
Summary: Comic masterpiece
Review: If Hunter S. Thompson had written "Ball Four" and cuisine had been the topic rather than baseball,"Kitchen Confidential" would have been the result...the funniest book since "A Confederacy of Dunces"...
Rating:
Summary: Secrets revealed- the dark world of a restaurant kitchen!
Review: Anthony Bourdain, self-proclaimed "thrill-seeking, pleasure-hungry, sensualist, always looking to shock, amuse, terrify and manipulate, seeking to fill that empty spot in my soul with something new," gives a sampling in this book of his life as a chef. He begins by explaining his first experiences really noticing and appreciating food at a young age on a trip to France. Bourdain goes on to explain how him and some hoodlum friends find themselves in the food business, and get involved in quite the trashy lifestyle. Then he has a realization that he wants to be a chef and heads to the Culinary Institute of America. He goes on to tell about the dark recesses of the restaurant underbelly, including struggling at the bottom of the "food chain" in many restaurants, making and learning from many mistakes, and revealing the the true nature of the rough crowd that thrives in restaurant kitchens. Some of the highlights include chapters on how to cook like the pros (where he gives some good tips and advice for all of us in the ignorant populace), what to be warry of on restaurant menus and what type of restaurants to avoid (including his soapbox speech on vegetarians and why they are "the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit" - I am a vegetarian by the way and you can tell that I am so offended), and of course the hilarious chapter on why people who want to own restaurants are sick in the head. The first paragraph of this chapter is a classic. This book does contain quite a bit of foul language. Also, a few sections of this book can drag on with a ton of detail about absolutely everything that goes on in the kitchen, but all in all this book is quite amusing. There are many more highlights that those I pointed out, and I do recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the realities of the restaurant world.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: Great Book! I hightly recommend! It was well written (easy-to-read, flowed well, great vocabulary, well balanced with humor and seriousness, painted a great picture of a 'life-in-the-life-of'). I especially enjoyed it having worked in the restaurant industry for a period of time, but anyone would enjoy it! Definitely shows the dark side a bit, but I believe it's a reality!
Rating: 
Summary: The 3-star chef
Review: Let me tell you something about this book, first. We'll go fromthere. "Kitchen Confidential" is a memoir written by AnthonyBourda.. Kitchen Confidential" reads like a stone skipped over water. It's a series of brief (albeit entertaining) skips across water. A lot of water is skipped over. I mean, he tells you what kick-started his love of food (an epiphanical trip to France with his family as a kid). You learn some of what is important to him (example: he always wanted cook's hands - hands that have been chipped, grizzled, burned, chopped, worried, hurt, slit; example: he has standards - you can pretty much get away with murder in a Bourdain kitchen, but you must never be late, you must never disrespect the food). Aside of the cooking, you glimpse the Keith Richards figure behind the chef. A wilderness period is (frustratingly, little more than) alluded to. At the end of the book, he apologises to all of the people that had to endure all or some of the self-same wilderness period. Could be me, but I would have liked to know more about Bourdain's Hyde. It's pretty hard to totally make your mind up one way or another about "Kitchen Confidential". On the one hand, you've got the representation of Bourdain in the book. He's a Burt Lancaster, straight out of "The Crimson Pirate". He's a pirate with a pirate crew. There's a whole team of bad boys herein. If there's a movie, you gotta call the movie "Cookfellas". All of which is (for the most part) a riot. You know that we are not at home to Mr Truth a lot of the time. (In fact, a good part of the book reminded me of Lorenzo Carcaterra's similarly controversial "Sleepers".) He's a pirate and embroidered stories are a pirate stock-in-trade, right? You wouldn't expect anything less. Truth doesn't matter. Bourdain is a five-star character. However. Anthony Bourdain is not a writer. Or he's a writer the way Mickey Rourke is an actor. In the last few pages of "Kitchen Confidential", he says: "Lying in bed, smoking my sixth or seventh cigarette of the morning, I'm wondering what the hell I'm going to do today. Oh yeah, I gotta write this thing. But that's not work, really, is it? It feels somehow shifty and . . . dishonest, making a buck writing. Writing anything is a treason of sorts. Even the cold recitation of facts- which is hardly what I've been up to - is never the thing itself." In lots of ways, "Kitchen Confidential" is a kind of jape. Worse than that (hell, he's not taking himself seriously, that's a good thing, in a way), though, is the sloppy edit. I'll tell you - there are commas in the middle of sentences, misspelled words ("bons mosts" instead of "bon mots", par example), errors by the pound. If you served up this book in any editorial kitchen, you'd get laughed out of court. Mal teste, right? You read the book and it's frustrating to see such a lack of effort. It would take one or two reads by a person who does this for a living to straighten out those kinds of problems and it's shocking (to me) that the book hasn't had that. Still. Always the pedant, right? Easier to spot a mistake after it's been made, right? Maybe. Still. The bad edit stops this book being a five. The Bourdain character (and it is a character, no mistaking that) is a pure five. You lose a star for the edit and you lose a star for the skipped water (next time: spill the beans!!). Still. Three stars - you're a chef, right?
Rating:
Summary: The secrets behind the swinging doors
Review: If you ever wondered what was happening behind the swinging doors while you ate in the splendor of a fine restaurant, you must read this book. In Bourdain's kitchens, there is much happening that never meets the eye of the descerning gourmand, or restaurant critic, but are enjoyable to his readers. Bourdain unveils many secrets that will probably change how and what you eat when you visit just about any eating establishment. He also reveals a variety of kitchen secrets for the would-be weekend chef looking to impress their friends with some professional tricks. I enjoyed this book and if you are interested in the TRUE secrets of the professional chef...add this to your reading list.
Rating:
Summary: Sweet Truth
Review: Anthony Bourdain's skill as an author is still growing. However, his passion in telling the story of his life makes Kitchen Confidential an outstanding read. As a kitchen manager, line cook, saute', pantry cook, pastry chef and prep of fourteen years, I can say, yes, Kitchen Confidential is beautifully true. There is nothing that compares to the bunker comradery and adrenalin high of a well-oiled kitchen crew toiling as one during a four hour dinner rush... nothing. Bravo, Anthony.
Rating:
Summary: Microcosm of the Human Endeavor
Review: First and foremost, I found the book fun to read. Many reviewers seemed to note the perversions (food to avoid and foul language/behavior). Certaintly there are parts, but only one chapter in the book is about things to avoid in a restaurant. Although there is a lot about debauchery, I had read all the Amazon reader reviews before I read the book and couldn't help being reminded about Upton Sinclair's remark about his book _The_Jungle_. Sinclair had meant to promote socialism, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." Unfortunately, people may remember this book as they do _The_Jungle_, about food abuse. If I analyze the "meaning" of the book for me(presumptiously), I took the book as a microcosm of human endeavor, the quest for perfection (in some sense) and the road travelled to get there, ultimately (perhaps) being happy with what one accomplishes. Taking risk, bad bosses, quitting, co-workers, new jobs and the meaning of life are given in a sort of series of stories.
Rating: 
Summary: Rambling...needs editing
Review: Too many adjectives. No documented information. Becomes boring. Reads like journal of person in recovery. Rambles on about... problems. Interesting information on chief tools. I heard him on talk show and got book from library. Disappointing.
Rating: 
Summary: Mastering the Art of Self Absorption
Review: Bourdain's account of his life as a chef is too long by half. The best parts of the book--his amusing revelations about where restaurant leftovers end up and why NOT to order the special--appeared in The New Yorker. Save money by finding the back issue and reading him there.The rest of the book, Bourdain's autobiography, is an unsavory casserole of narcissism and some not terribly convincing self loathing, spiced with so many boring references to scoring drugs that, by the end, I found myself skimming rather than reading. There are a number of typos, and the book has a manic, disorganized quality that presumably reflects the author's personality but, more likely, suggests that it was rushed into print. Bourdain's prose resembles, well, a buffet table: a few decent things but an awful lot of chicken chow mein and seafood Newburg.
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