Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
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- ISBN13: 9780739332351
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
When Chef Anthony Bourdain wrote “Don’t Eat Before You Read This” in The New Yorker, he spared no one’s appetite, revealing what goes on behind the kitchen door. In Kitchen Confidential, he expanded the appetizer into a deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet that lays out his twenty-five years of sex, drugs, and haute cuisine.
From his first oyster in Gironda to the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, from the restaurants of Tokyo to the drug dealers of the East Village, from the mobsters to the rats, Bourdain’s brilliantly written and wonderfully read, wild-but-true tales make the belly ache with laughter.Amazon.com Review
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
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sally larhette on Sun, 14th Mar 2010 2:30 pm
I studied with Madelaine Kamman in Newton Centre, Ma. who had the only great restruant at that time, she and Enzo Danesi changed the way Boston wanted to eat when dining out, in the 70′s, you could wait 3 months to get a reservation in her sparkling, clean,restruant. I marveled at her ability to give the customer very good food, no leftovers and most of it fresh that day. Pates’,some desserts, normally carried to next day, like a cake or frozen sorbet. I was there over a period of three years and know how great a chef she was and is. Sally LaRhette
Rating: 2 / 5
Anonymous on Sun, 14th Mar 2010 3:12 pm
I WANTED to like this book. It was our book club selection… I was hosting the book club meeting…and I always read the monthly books. Somehow, this book put me in a bad mood, especially during the holidays, and its foul language and distasteful stories didn’t fit with my family, holiday spirit. Instead, I stuck with “Good in Bed”, “Clara”, and “Master of the Senate”.
Rating: 1 / 5
Anonymous on Sun, 14th Mar 2010 3:28 pm
A star wants to be born, amidst the puddles of animal fat, screams and blood. A star who finds sensual pleasure in frying animal fat and who openly hates vegetarians, compassion and anyone who’s not as twisted as he is. An individual who longs for the exquisite taste of monkey brains (were the monkey’s craneum top is removed while still alive, to die only with the trust of the metal spoon). This person embodies the worst of the qualities that have made the French so famous: a decadent sensory obsession and experimentation where anything and everything goes (and has), coupled with the arrogance and disdain of a people who long for appreciation they’ve never gotten. My veredict: This book is just another brick of the wall that separates France from civilization.
Rating: 1 / 5
Arnold D. Hancock on Sun, 14th Mar 2010 4:15 pm
Rairly have I read a book that I hate. This is it! Not only is it not funny but it is insulting to anyone who would sit in his dining room. Tony’s fan base just lost one.
Rating: 1 / 5
Margaret Norton on Sun, 14th Mar 2010 7:10 pm
I’d rate this as 0 if it were an option. Bourdain seems to be trying to live up to some kind of strange ideal, but he comes across as self-centered and self-absorbed. Not worth the read.
Rating: 1 / 5