Review: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Anthony Bourdain is a no holds barred kinda guy. He is extremely candid and unapologetic in life and that attitude comes across loudly in Kitchen Confidential. The man could be an ass and he admits it. He has been around the block a few times, been chewed up, and spit out. That is what you call experience and when it comes to the culinary world, he has that in spades. This book is Bourdain laid out raw from his youth traveling to France with his family and discovering what food should really taste and look like to being a well known culinary personality known worldwide. The art of eating is about using all the senses and Bourdain gained this understanding at an early age. As a young man, he went on to be a mediocre sous chef before going on to school at the Culinary Institute of America. He worked his way up to be an Executive Chef at Les Halles in New York and finally as a journalist and television host of shows like No Reservations and Parts Unknown. This man knows food, how to cook it, how to eat it, how to savor it.

I have seen Bourdain's shows off and on over the years. I was never very fond of him because of the way he would bash other chefs in the media, but then I saw him on The Taste, a short-lived cooking competition that seemed to try to copy cat The Voice. I had more respect for him after watching him on there. He was less "loud" and more compassionate and I could see the respect he had for culinary arts. I was saddened to hear of his passing in 2018. The man was extreme and likely dealt with a lot that did not come out to the public. I had planned to read this book for some time. It's sad to see how full of life he was when he wrote this book. He was a person that never considered giving up but would cut his losses at one job to go on to something that would be better and build on his skills. Something got lost somewhere along the way, I suspect. He definitely had a heart and was compassionate of people, at least those he was close with, outside of work. All of these aspects of his personality come out in this book.

I will say that after reading this book if I ever had an inclination to go into the restaurant business, this has killed that desire. I appreciate restauranteurs and others that work in the business more than ever. It's a hard job and takes a lot of work and planning. I much prefer to enjoy the end result, something that Bourdain often did himself. It's what made him an icon in the culinary world.

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