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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
In this typically bold effort, Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential), like the fine chef he is, pulls together an entertaining feast from the detritus of his years of cooking and traveling. Arranged around the basic tastes: salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami (a Japanese term for a taste the defies description), this scattershot collection of anecdotes puts Bourdain's brave palate, notorious sense of adventure and fine writing on display. From the horrifying opening passages, where he joins an Arctic family in devouring a freshly slaughtered seal, to a final work of fiction, the text may disappoint those who've come to expect more honed kitchen insights from the chef. Surprisingly, though, the less substantive kitchen material Bourdain has to work from only showcases his talent for observation. This book isn't for the effete foodies Bourdain clearly despises (though they'd do well to read it). He criticizes celebrity chefs, using Rocco DiSpirito as a "cautionary tale," and commends restaurants that still serve stomach-turning if palate-pleasing dishes, such as New York's Pierre au Tunnel (now closed), which offered tête de veau, essentially "calf's face, rolled up and tied with its tongue and thymus gland." Fans of Bourdain's hunger for the edge will gleefully consume this never-boring book.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
Deriving in large part from his popular series of television travelogues, Bourdain's new collection of essays breezes along. Bourdain writes as he talks--irreverently, earthily, and determinedly free of euphemism. The reader can almost hear him dragging on his cigarette between sentences. In just a few pages he lays bare the gritty, fill-those-tables economics that govern a restaurant's success without respect to the competence of its cooks. He surveys the current crop of overpublicized chefs in their trendy Las Vegas digs and finds their eateries flourishing if soulless. He fears that celebrity (and vast riches) will undo many potentially great chefs, but exceptions such as Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse confirm his faith in the higher side of his profession. Anyone who's ever dined in one of the thousands of undistinguished and indistinguishable "family" restaurants clogging the nation's highways will appreciate Bourdain's take on "Restaurant Hell." His lusty paean to the old, freewheeling Times Square of drugs, sex, and crime offers a contrarian, in-your-face riposte to New York City's touristy gentrification. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Anthony"s Antics,
This review is from: The Nasty Bits (Perfect Paperback)
Anthony Bourdain out there having fun and working at entertaining us . He succeeds with this foodie who lives some of his life vicariously through him. It is great to get detail of some of his programs and go into more depth that can not be expressed in a fifteen second sound bite. I am really enjoying the fiction chapter at the end. Maybe it is time to branch out into Sci Fi cookery in space in the thirtieth century. Loved the book and watch all the shows.Brentmcf
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Yet,
By Lorraine Tate (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Nasty Bits (Perfect Paperback)
I loved this book. Aside from seeing Tony looking straight through my soul on the cover, the content is funnier than all his other books. I love his take on anything and everything. He is a great writer and if he continues to churn out books that are this amusing, I will buy them all.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining tidbits,
By Daisey (Montreal) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Nasty Bits (Perfect Paperback)
This book is hard to put down. Anthony Bourdain has an entertaining and usually cynical way to the truth about culinary matters. The writing is superb and he definitely knows his way around any restaurant or kitchen.
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