Anthony Bourdain’s death from suicide on 8th June caused quite a stir and many people are talking about it on Facebook.
I have seen Anthony Bourdain on television a few times but I am not really interested in celebrities.
Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential caught my attention when it first came out in 2000 and I was very interested in reading it but I never quite got around to that. Someone on Facebook wrote something about this book and I remembered that it is actually written by Anthony Bourdain. I promptly bought the ebook on Amazon and I finished it in less than a week.
Besides television shows like Hell’s Kitchen and Masterchef and romanticised versions shown in Korean dramas, I have never stepped into a kitchen and seen what really happen behind those doors. Kitchen Confidential gives me a look into the real kitchen, where foul language, sex and drugs are a large part of it. It is a crazy world in there where they have their own lingo, where blistered hands filled with hideous constellations and angry red welts are a sign of pride.
This book is part autobiography and part non-fiction, starting off with Anthony Bourdain describing how and why he got into the restaurant business and became a chef to showing how the restaurant business is really run and why many of them fail.
It is a hugely entertaining read. Anythony Bourdain is hugely entertaining with a wicked sense of humour. Just when you think you know it, he proves you wrong all over again.
