Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.)

This was the last book that I was supposed to read in a book club at work before I dropped out of the club. The idea of reading a book about a cook was totally uninteresting to me. I have worked as a waiter and a dishwasher and there was nothing fun or interesting about it. It was a way to make money, when I couldn't find anything better. I cook my own food every now and then, but I find chopping veggies, reducing sauces and boiling pasta necessary evils with nothing redeeming about the process--only the end result. Then there are the mounds of pans, dishes and utensils to wash.

Recently on the recommendation of my son, I started viewing Anthony Bourdain's TV shows on the travel channel. I started with his shows on places I know well and I was amazed at how he found great places to eat that I had never hard of. But mostly I liked his lyrical descriptions of people and places and the food the locals make. That inspired me to read his last book--Medium Raw and then the book I passed up 10 years ago.

I will say this about the author--he may not always be right, but he's never at a loss for words. He's arrogant and opinionated and probably obnoxious in person. I don't find anything inspiring about his drug abuse and sexual depredations with waitresses. I can say for sure there was none to little of that in any joint I worked in, and to the extent there was, it was with partners anyone with a brain would pass up. I suspect that this book probably needs a legend on the cover that says, "Inspired by real events." It reads like one of Norman Mailer's, nonfiction novels, with some interesting vignettes, breathlessly hyperbolized to make the author seems cool when he is really just wretched.

One of my colleagues was married to a woman who in her middle age decided to go to cooking school. After cooking school, she found the chefs where she worked to be abusive and paranoid. They wouldn't teach anyone anything, because the chef was afraid they would leave and take the chef's secrets with them.

I'm glad that Anthony Bourdain survived his self abuse. His book about his failures was a fun read, if you like to read about people trying to destroy themselves and somehow managing to rise above it. But there was also some good insight into the restaurant business. I now won't ever get fish on a Monday. I do like going out to dinner during the week, and now I know why that's a good idea. I'm glad to see that he has helped everyone understand how tough it is to work in a restaurant and put out hundreds of meals per day, exactly the same way in a hot, cramped environment. But then I knew that already. If you don't, this is the book for you.

Always been a fan of Anthony Bourdain, long before his shows. As a chef myself, I've long appreciated his ability to take readers into the food service world, the love of food and the workings of it. I have given this book as a gift to several people who are not chefs or in the food world at all, and all of them have loved it and several of them told me they read it twice. I have read it many times. There aren't too many truly excellent pieces of literature on the chef world probably because most chefs are not also expressive writers--although Michale Ruhlman does a great job though he is more of a writer than a chef. However, this is one of the few beauties where the chef does both memorably.

If you enjoyed any of Anthony Bourdain's travel series on CNN you definitely will enjoy this book. He writes just as frankly as you would expect he talks. This is a fascinating and no holds bared non-fiction read about the restaurants, management, chefs and staff that prepared our food at that time yet It's not hard to believe this book became an instant best seller but that he didn't alienate himself from the industry and his peers in the process is amazing. He was truly an amazing man; intelligent, witty, charming and obsessed.