By Ava Shaffer
In this brutally honest and humorous confessional about “the culinary underbelly of America”, renowned chef Anthony Bourdain reconstructs the memoir genre by taking readers through his exhilarating journey to chefdom. From dishwasher to fine dining executive chef, Bourdain covers every nook and cranny of the food industry. Riddled with wild anecdotes, mythic chefs, musings on recipes, and insider tips for eating at restaurants, Kitchen Confidential is an instant classic and wealth of food knowledge.
"For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we've all had to become disappears, when we're confronted with something as simple as a plate of food.”
Read This Book If You…
Watched and loved the TV show The Bear
Want to read a memoir more entertaining and insulting than you’ve ever read before
Are interested in the world of cooking and food
“Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”
I have been on such a good kick with memoirs lately! It’s only February and I’ve already read three five star memoirs this year, including this one (the others being Just Kids and How We Fight For Our Lives). I’ve gotta say, Kitchen Confidential was one of the most honest, entertaining, humorous, and exciting memoirs I have ever read. And boy did I learn a lot about food!
I read the audiobook of Kitchen Confidential, narrated by Anthony Bourdain himself, and I cannot recommend it enough. He did a fantastic job narrating his story– his brutal honesty, dark humor, and passion for food shining through with his own sarcastic and dry voice.
Right off the bat I’ll start with what I didn’t like about this book, which is unsurprisingly the consistent sprinkling of sexism and racism throughout. He really did not have to say a racial slur in this and the constant defensiveness about how this kind of language is common for kitchens got very tedious. Some people defend this book in that regard, saying it's a product of its time, representing a specific industry, or it was a different kind of environment at the time. Even if that’s true, there doesn’t need to be an almost bragging manner about the casual prejudice, or a “boys will be boys”-esq excuse to let it keep happening. I definitely could’ve done without that, it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
With that being said, the rest of this book was a hit for me. Kitchen Confidential simultaneously made me hungry and disgusted by food. It was such a wonderful trip to hear Bourdain’s culinary journey from the start, reading all about every misadventure and life lesson he learned along the way. Even if it’s a nonfiction and these people he wrote about actually exist, this book had such a colorful and robust cast of characters that keep me interested on every single page.
“Garlic is divine. Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screwtop jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don't deserve to eat garlic.”
Not only was the content of this book fascinating, but the craft of Kitchen Confidential blew me away. The pacing, construction, and narration in each chapter was incredibly clever and sharp. From a deep dive into the notorious chef in the chapter aptly titled “Bigfoot” to the lengthy “Day In the Life” narration, there was such a wide variety of expertise and knowledge shared in these pages. The chapter where Bourdain listed specific tips for eating at restaurants definitely stuck with me, and I certainly will not be ordering fish on Mondays anymore. One of my favorite chapters had to be “What I Know About Meat” mainly for the ending, which was perhaps one of the funniest and best set up punchlines I’ve ever read. The conclusion of this book, “Kitchen’s Closed” is a reflection back through his years as a cook, which pulled at my sentimental heartstrings by describing the scars Bourdain has earned on his hands from cooking and describing where each chef in his life has ended up. It was a pitch-perfect ending, one that fit the passion and humor that was at the very heart of this book.
“I've long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we're talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime 'associates,' food, for me, has always been an adventure”“