As previously evidenced, I really love Anthony Bourdain. I think he’s an excellent TV personality, a good writer, and by all accounts a decent cook. I read his books out of order, but that didn’t seem to take away from anything. Kitchen Confidential was everything I wanted it to be. Straight-forward (as much as any memoir is, I suppose), lurid, profane, and yet somehow elegant. Bourdain has such a distinctive voice, be in in television or writing, and there’s no question of ghostwriters other autobiographies may raise. […]
Good food and good eating are about risk
There’s a certain amusement that comes from knowing more than the teller of a story. I don’t often suggest reading memoirs or the like so far after their publication dates (see my experience with Denis Leary’s Why We Suck earlier this year). But, there was a delicious sort of fun to be had reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential and knowing what his life would turn out like in the decade which followed the book’s publication in 2000. He certainly, had no idea. You’re likely familiar […]