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Loading... Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbellyby Anthony Bourdain
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. The glamour of the restaurant business is turned upside down, then up again by Anthony Bourdain. A veteran chef, he shares not only the in's and outs of pushing out fine cuisine to the customer, but the wild life of working in the business. Humorous, and jaw-dropping at times, this read gives one a bit of the New York City culture and the behind the scenes frenzy in the restaurant world. Could offer some new revelations to those seeking careers in culinary arts. trisha1 | Jul 8, 2009 |   Fun read. Bourdain writes in a very frank and informal style. I liked that the book wasn't quite an autobiography - it talked about his coming up in the cooking world, but he spent very little time on his wife or his personal life. Kitchen Confidential is often quoted for some of the advice Bourdain dispenses (including the infamous "never order fish on Monday"), but this is actually a very small part of the book (compromising a small part of a single chapter). The rest of the book has a chef-turned-author alternating between waxing poetic about the food he loves, and deriding his extremely dysfunctional "family" (the cooks and chefs in his life). The prose about his family is honest and full of both genuine love and hate, and while the talk about food is over the top, it can be forgiven as ramblings from a man in the middle of a lifelong on-again off-again love affair with food. (  )etimme | May 11, 2009 | Bourdain has an incredible writing style - I found his book really hard to put down, reading hundreds of pages in one sitting without even thinking about the time. He's also funny, self-depreciating, and very opinionated, which I love. (  )ZanKnits | Apr 23, 2009 | I love Anthony Bourdain. He's cynical & intelligent & loves food & cooking & being alive. He's a pleasure seeker of the first order. He's honest & knows when he's been bad, self-destructive, or boorish. He knows how to laugh at himself. He likes The Sex Pistols & Television & The Cramps. He rocks! This book is well-written and often hilarious. I found myself laughing out loud while reading & then having to say, "Honey, hold up, you gotta hear this." My sweetie, having spent many years on the line in everything from Mexican to Italian to 5-star French kept laughing, then shuddering, then saying things like, "I've had that day." This was followed by shudders & general cringing and the tale of the drunken Belgian pastry check who burnt his puff pastries & threw an industrial-sized tray hot from the oven at the dishwasher's head. The dishwasher escaped decapitation and 3rd degree burns because he knew how to duck. Bourdain is honest & brutally funny & combines his personal experience in & of kitchens with historical tidbits and other analysis. Anyone who is dreaming of opening a restaurant should his chapter, "A Day in the Life." It'll make whatever desk job you're currently doing look pretty damned good. ( )kraaivrouw | Apr 19, 2009 | I have always been a fan of Anthony Bourdain's patented brand of snark on his various Television adventures. I was very pleased to find that this translates well to the page. I must admit, not being a foodie myself, that some of the language/foods/french references went a bit over my head, but that aside, it was still an excellent read. You can almost picture yourself sitting across from Tony at a bar, as he sips on a cocktail and takes a drag from his cigarette, telling you the tales of his culinary exploits. ( )JechtShot | Apr 9, 2009 | 0.154 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0060899220, Paperback)Most diners believe that their sublime sliver of seared foie gras, topped with an ethereal buckwheat blini and a drizzle of piquant huckleberry sauce, was created by a culinary artist of the highest order, a sensitive, highly refined executive chef. The truth is more brutal. More likely, writes Anthony Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, that elegant three-star concoction is the collaborative effort of a team of "wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts, and psychopaths," in all likelihood pierced or tattooed and incapable of uttering a sentence without an expletive or a foreign phrase. Such is the muscular view of the culinary trenches from one who's been groveling in them, with obvious sadomasochistic pleasure, for more than 20 years. CIA-trained Bourdain, currently the executive chef of the celebrated Les Halles, wrote two culinary mysteries before his first (and infamous) New Yorker essay launched this frank confessional about the lusty and larcenous real lives of cooks and restaurateurs. He is obscenely eloquent, unapologetically opinionated, and a damn fine storyteller--a Jack Kerouac of the kitchen. Those without the stomach for this kind of joyride should note his opening caveat: "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." --Sumi Hahn(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:12 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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