Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Kindle
$13.53

Available instantly

Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial

Hardcover
$17.99

Paperback
$14.70

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Thursday, January 25 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Select delivery location

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

$$14.70 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Amazon

Ships from

Amazon

Sold by

Legacy Books & Media

Sold by

Legacy Books & Media

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery Tuesday, January 23 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Select delivery location

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Opti Sales

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$14.70
FREE Shipping on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.

Sold by: The Boujee Hippie

Added

Not added

$10.71
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: Virginia Bookmen

Added

Not added

$18.49
& FREE Shipping

Sold by: The Art of Savings

Follow the author

Anthony Bourdain

Follow

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly Paperback – May 1, 2001

by Anthony Bourdain (Author)

4.5 23,095 ratings

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$14.70","priceAmount":14.70,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"14","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"70","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"M5qHTn52TFjw1QRwyQeSlrZH6epOe6a3e6HpbyNDE24IhlIIICGBdTLya74U7VTj0DLbRRhsSL43VrSdQboaLoJvDMW0DlHRXrLeln2gnhl6DF0xHXaLgMljbV9kyNKTK0u5Jidai0eDhq92pASJ9EYeposkElBK6NrVN555QyfPzGPscGqHCrJBz9FV4i0l","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$6.95","priceAmount":6.95,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"6","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"95","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"M5qHTn52TFjw1QRwyQeSlrZH6epOe6a358RE6jdOkDuY1O918BR99KTYaeZavaldNF95D6BSQNJoyOap3Wf4RSzUntYtOSJ2Ksv3asIEff9Juz1ofTkK6%2BApam2b6DU8DlGPCZ%2B97nlwLFoHmPV4oh95G1JLlrDjJlF7zIszDk1C1ypqOts%2Fv09V9V0yA%2BkG","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

When Chef Anthony Bourdain wrote "Don't Eat Before You Read This" in The New Yorker, he spared no one's appetite, revealing what goes on behind the kitchen door. In Kitchen Confidential, he expanded that appetizer into a deliciously funny, delectable shocking banquet that lays out his 25 years of sex, drugs, and haute cuisine.

From his first oyster in the Gironde to the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, from the restaurants of Tokyo to the drug dealers of the East Village, from the mobsters to the rats, Bourdain's brilliantly written, wild-but-true tales make the belly ache with laughter.

Amazon.com Review

Most diners 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 in Kitchen Confidential, 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. CIA-trained 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 favor 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

Review

"...the kind of book you read in one sitting, then rush about annoying your coworkers by declaiming whole passages." -- USA Today

"Utterly riveting, swaggering with stylish machismo and precise ear for kitchen patois." -- New York Magazine

"You'll laugh, you'll cry...you're gonna love it." -- Denver Post

A gonzo memoir of whats really going on behind those swinging doors.... Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain is unique. -- Newsweek

Hysterical.... Bourdain gleefully rips through the scenery to reveal private backstage horrors. -- New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Anthony Bourdain is the executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in New York, and he is the host of the series No Reservations on the Travel Channel. He is the author of A Cook's Tour, Les Halles Cookbook, and the novels Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harper Perennial
Publication date

May 1, 2001
Dimensions

5.31 x 0.72 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0060934913
ISBN-13

978-0060934910
See all details

Frequently bought together

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

$14.70

Get it as soon as Thursday, Jan 25

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

Sold by Legacy Books & Media and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.

+

$19.60

Get it as soon as Friday, Jan 19

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook (P.S.)

$9.25

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Try again!

Details

Added to Cart

Some of these items ship sooner than the others.

Show details Hide details

Choose items to buy together.

Anthony Bourdain
4,596
Hardcover
60 offers from $12.66
Anthony Bourdain
4,867
Hardcover
96 offers from $8.37
Anthony Bourdain
594
Hardcover
77 offers from $8.13
Anthony Bourdain
1,961
Perfect Paperback
124 offers from $1.30
Tom Vitale
1,363
Paperback
1 offer from $13.49
Anthony Bourdain
799
Hardcover
59 offers from $4.63

Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

If you need instruction on how to handle a knife without lopping off a finger, I recommend Jacques Pepin's La Technique.
Highlighted by 4,858 Kindle readers
Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.
Highlighted by 3,966 Kindle readers
Like I said before, your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.
Highlighted by 3,928 Kindle readers

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial; 1st Thus. edition (May 1, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0060934913
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060934910
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.72 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,720,502 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #553 in Mid Atlantic U.S. Biographies
- #1,745 in Culinary Biographies & Memoirs
- #3,446 in Wine & Spirits

Customer Reviews:
4.5 23,095 ratings

Important information

To report an issue with this product or seller, click here.

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Anthony Bourdain

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Chef, author, and raconteur Anthony Bourdain is best known for traveling the globe on his TV show Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. Somewhat notoriously, he has established himself as a professional gadfly, bête noir, advocate, social critic, and pork enthusiast, recognized for his caustic sense of humor worldwide. He is as unsparing of those things he hates, as he is evangelical about his passions.

Bourdain is the author of the New York Times bestselling Kitchen Confidential and Medium Raw; A Cook’s Tour; the collection The Nasty Bits; the novels Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo; the biography Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical; two graphic novels, Get Jiro! and Get Jiro!: Blood and Sushi and his latest New York Times bestselling cookbook Appetites. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Times of London, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Vanity Fair, Lucky Peach and many other publications. In 2013, Bourdain launched his own publishing line with Ecco, Anthony Bourdain Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. He is the host of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning docuseries Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown on CNN, and before that hosted Emmy award-winning No Reservations and The Layover on Travel Channel, and The Taste on ABC.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

23,095 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Reviews with images

See all photos

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Heather

It's Bourdain, what more do you need?

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2023

Verified Purchase

The man has a way with words, he lived life like no other, and tells his stories as no one else could

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Engrossing memoir from an author, traveler, and chef

Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2018

Verified Purchase

Kitchen Confidential is Anthony Bourdain’s break-out book and memoir of his twenty-five years working in the restaurant business, mostly in New York City. Published before his second career as a TV personality and world traveler (most notably on the Travel Channel’s No Reservations) it is a candid depiction of one man’s life following his passion, and his desires. It is a gritty, grubby, way-honest, depiction of life as a restaurant worker that tells of sex, drugs, and cooking, at a level of which many of us would not dream. At least, most of us wouldn’t imagine that the life in restaurant kitchens is really the way this book describes it. It is evident, though, that what the book depicts is restaurant life as Mr. Bourdain experienced it. He makes no bones about his own biases and proclivities for walking on the wild side that color his story. Such honesty and introspection make this far more than a book about cooking.

Kitchen Confidential is well written and it maintained my interest even though I’m not into cooking. Anyone who is will certainly get much from it, but I was drawn mostly from having watched Mr. Bourdain on TV and connecting with his love of travel and of good food. Because his book is more about the larger issues of life than cooking, it touched me on an existential level much as a movie about baseball would that is about more than baseball (e.g., Field of Dreams).

Mr. Bourdain begins his story by recounting his encounters with good food as a child. Tasting vichyssoise and a raw oyster for the first time, struck him as experiences beyond just eating. They were examples of highs that could be reached by an ardent thrill-seeker. They also laid the groundwork that made his landing a job as restaurant dishwasher an inciting incident that he pursued to eventually become a line cook and later a chef.

I was really struck with the level of testosterone-driven, debauchery and near-criminality he describes in the restaurant kitchen. It’s more like what I would expect on a construction site. Actually, there may be similarities.

Several of the book’s chapters are devoted to characters Mr. Bourdain encountered in his restaurant career. These tended to be drug addicts, thieves, hedonists, and criminals, though many had a passion, or just the sheer aptitude, for either cooking or working in a professional kitchen. As contradictory as that sounds, it seems as if such environments are persistently common in the restaurant world. At least that’s what Mr. Bourdain avers and I take him as an authority.

This kitchen “underbelly” was attractive to Mr. Bourdain, and he describes it as one he understood and in which he thrived. It led him to some bad decisions and some bad addictions. He is very candid about the loose lifestyle that left him with a heroin addiction. Even so, it is clear that his love of the culinary arts kept him going, and that it drives many of those workers who might skip out on rent payments but are able to produce the most divine of, say, baked breads.

Indeed, in describing his life when he had reached the level of chef and kitchen commander, Mr. Bourdain gives us a compelling and intense vision of what that life is like. In fact, he almost goes too far in describing a typical day for him. Basically, he worked from before-sunup to after midnight to keep his kitchen running. He describes mind-numbing activity, dealing with the problems and personnel threatening his mission to get good food to customers, juggling a thousand variables. His description carries long (”A Day in the Life”), but being the good author he was, his description served to highlight points he makes later.

Seeing things, even his own life, from a higher perspective, he was able to appreciate and admire someone who did things differently from him and still achieve success (”The Life of Bryan”). Also, towards the end of the book, he further nails his love of sensation and travel—experiencing the exotic— that led to his second, televised, career (”Mission to Tokyo”).

Anthony Bourdain’s literary and video work is not for everyone, but for many, including me, he remains an inspiration. In Kitchen Confidential we see, not only his love for culinary art, but his love for creativity (he often said that he considered himself a storyteller).

Despite all the debauchery, bad attitudes, bad decisions, and chasing highs, he was a lover of life and squeezed every sensational drop from it. An excellent writer, he was able to step back from his own life and observe it, pulling lessons from its episodes. Kitchen Confidential was the watershed of Mr. Bourdain’s life, marking the end of his chef career and the beginning of his traveler-personality career. At the book’s close, though, he didn’t seem to anticipating that second act. It is to our good fortune and inspiration that there was one.

16 people found this helpful

Helpful

Brian

an industry Bible

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2023

Verified Purchase

If you’ve left blood and sweat in the BOH or FOH then this book is a must.
If not you may still enjoy it but you’ll never truly get it.

Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2023

Verified Purchase

Fast shipping, easy payment

One person found this helpful

Helpful

J. Seigle

He won't get out of the kitchen, he LOVES the heat

Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2005

Verified Purchase

I bought this book on the recommendation of a friend, and had never heard of the author. If you are offended by four-letter words do not read this book. If you are offended by frank talk about sexual matters do not read this book. If you are offended by open discussion of drug use do not read this book. If you think Emeril Lagasse is the ultimate in chefs do not read this book.

Who should read this book?

This is not a book about how to cook, how to get a job as a chef, how to get the most when ordering in a restuarant, or even what it's really like to work in a professional kitchen, although the book touches on each of this topics. This is really a book about what it's like to be Anthony Bourdain, who happens to have used cooking to pull himself from an abyss of drug use and hand-to-mouth living to become the executive chef at Les Halles in New York.

Bourdain talks frankly and doesn't give a rat's patoot (not how he would have put it) about who he might offend by doing so. His web site even gives a recipe but warns against the possibility of hot liquid coming out of a blender because it hurts like a <12-letter word>. He openly disdains celebrity chefs who work only in a three-walled kitchen in front of the cameras, with their own line of prepared seasonings, preferring to admire those who bust their ass serving hundreds of meals a night, night after night. He doesn't name names but you know he's thinking of Lagasse.

This book does weed out wannabe chefs. I have had a few cooking classes at a French-operated cooking school and have daydreamed of cooking as a second career. This book pretty much cured me of that notion (which is true of many hobbyists in any field who discover that going pro takes all the fun out of it). The good ones work hard; in Bourdain's case it seems like he is either in the kitchen or thinking about it over 60 hours a week, every week.

Bourdain redeems himself in the final chapters when he contrasts his own experiences and leadership style against that of an admired colleague, showing us that despite the history depicted in the foregoing pages you don't have to have a kitchen full of shouting trash-talking, tatooed, sex-starved, fraternal macho men to turn out great food.

The book closes with a vivid description of Bourdain's trip to Tokyo, especially one particular meal. He is certainly an adventurous eater. His web site has a video taken during a trip abroad where he eats--stop here if you have a delicate stomach, or are a member of PETA--the heart of a cobra, freshly cut from the serpent and still beating.

A friend of mine owns a restaurant, and I was talking to the chef a couple of weeks ago and mentioned this book. She has read it three times and says it's fairly much dead on. She has worked with a few big names in the DC area and the management styles of many well-known chefs would get them called in on the carpet by HR if they behaved that way at a Fortune 500 company.

Do not draw the generalization that every restuarant is like the ones where Bourdain has worked--but I'll bet some are worse.

28 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

seawitch

Excellent

Reviewed in Mexico on October 21, 2023

Verified Purchase

Good quality dfast delivery

Ross D

Great read.

Reviewed in Canada on September 16, 2023

Verified Purchase

Awesome read.

One person found this helpful

Vi Cuth

Thrilling read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 22, 2023

Verified Purchase

Loved the book. Easy read with outrageous and thrilling stories. Bourdain writes in a very relaxed manner as if he’s talking to you and leaves you eager to hear more.

Rain

Impossible to put down. Great Book.

Reviewed in Belgium on September 22, 2023

Verified Purchase

I wanted to keep this book for a later holiday read but that’s not going to happen ! I can’t put it down.

Frank R. Soares

Fun! Fun! Fun!

Reviewed in Spain on September 7, 2023

Verified Purchase

Fun!

See more reviews