Kitchen Confidential

Product Information

His work has appeared in The New York Times and The New Yorker, and he was a contributing authority for Food Arts magazine. THE CLASSIC BESTSELLER: 'The greatest book about food ever written''A compelling book with its intriguing mix of clever writing and kitchen patois .

Corner curling and small creases to front cover and first pages, a couple of further pages with creased page corners, spine reading creases, tight and unmarked. The only problem from a writing point of view is that sometimes the main narrative of Bourdain's progress through the industry seems confused, missing sections, which isn’t helped by some of the aside chapters falling out of chronology with the main narrative, confusing me at points.I've never watched his show or heard much about him besides the suspicious rumors surrounding his death. Okay, so there were some interesting bits if you just skimmed through all the abuse and the nasty bits. I remember everything about the experience: the way our waiter ladled it from a silver tureen into my bowl; the crunch of tiny chopped chives he spooned on as garnish; the rich, creamy taste of leek and potato; the pleasurable shock, the surprise that it was cold. In his food shows, Bourdain's cynicism was readily visible, but it had always been eclipsed by his curious humility and openness to new cultures and their foods.

I was also an enormous Bourdain fan, religiously watching his television appearances and loving his take-no-prisoners philosophy when it came to adventurous eating (not something we shared, per se). It resonated, waking me up, making me aware of my tongue and, in some way, preparing me for future events. It captures the combination of awful practices, bleak hours, myriad of injuries, sexual harassment and cursing, simultaneously explaining why people still choose to live that life.The narrative is somewhat fragmented from chapter to chapter as they're not linked, and each individual chapter could be a standalone short story. The biography takes you through from his childhood and his realisation (in France of course) that food was important, his start in the cooking industry, culinary college, and then working his way up through all the positions a chef can take until eventually running a kitchen with his own, as he puts it, brigades of pirates, degenerates and thieves.