Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain

I've been a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain for a long time now.  Watching him first on No Reservations and then on Parts Unknown, I became fascinated by the places he visited, the food he ate, and the people he met.  But more than anything, I loved the stories he told.  He let the viewer in to the history of each place, the forgotten stories that truly make the land and the people special.  He didn't hold anything back when telling these stories and you could tell in his words that he wasn't there to exploit the people, but rather to educate the viewers about so many things we didn't know.  He did this by speaking to the people in each country or city he visited, but more so did it through eating the food native to each land.  You can learn so much about the people by the food they eat.  And Bourdain was a master at learning and teaching the most important things.

 Kitchen Confidential is the story of how he got there.  It is his personal history of how he came to love food and his time in the restaurant industry.  He struggled with his demons, but worked hard to accomplish all that he did.  He didn't always do it right, but he gave it everything he had.  This book lays it all on the line and gives the reader an intimate look at the business of food.  Even though he left us way too soon, he left us the gift of his storytelling in books like Kitchen Confidential. 

 

From Amazon: 

A deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade from Chef Anthony Bourdain, laying out his more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine—now with all-new, never-before-published material.