Kitchen Confidential [Paperback]

Kitchen Confidential is for diners who 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, 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.

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 favour 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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'A compelling book with its intriguing mix of clever writing and kitchen patois ... more horrifically gripping than a Stephen King novel' Sunday Times 'Fantastic: as lip-smackingly seductive as a bowl of fat chips and pungent aioli' Daily Telegraph 'Elizabeth David written by Quentin Tarantino' A.A. Gill 'Extraordinary ... written with a clarity and a clear-eyed wit to put the professional food-writing fraternity to shame' Observer

'It's not exactly Delia' GUARDIAN 'Fantastic: as lip-smackingly seductive as a bowl of fat chips and pungent aioli' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Exposes Jamie Oliver for the choirboy that he is' GLASGOW HERALD 'Extraordinary - written with a clarity and a clear-eyed wit to put the professional food-writing fraternity to shame' OBSERVER --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Elizabeth David written by Quentin Tarantino.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Extraordinary...written with a clarity and a clear-eyed wit to put the professional food-writing fraternity to shame.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Just reading it I felt sated...real, fast and frantic, this book conveys the buzz of the kitchen in a way that only a real cook will be able to understand.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

After twenty-five years of 'sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine', chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain has decided to tell all. From his first oyster in the Gironde to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown; from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop the Rockefeller Center to drug dealers in the East Village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable, as shocking as they are funny.

Anthony Bourdain is the executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in New York City. He is also the author of two novels GONE BAMBOO and BONE IN THE THROAT to be published by Cannongate in March 2000. His expose of New York restaurants 'Don't Eat Before Reading This' was published in the NEW YORKER in 1999 attracting huge attention in America and the U.K. KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL is his first book of non-fiction.