Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Author:
Genres: Biographies & Memoirs, Cookbooks, Food & Wine
Book Type: Paperback
Author:
Genres: Biographies & Memoirs, Cookbooks, Food & Wine
Book Type: Paperback
Helpful Score: 2
Tony's use of language is a bit rough, but the book is laugh-out-loud funny and a really interesting. I highly recommend it. It is one of the very few books I plan to read again...and perhaps again.
I have worked in a very good restaurant and in reading this book was able to recognize the many truths that Bourdain exposes.
Tony comes clean about his years of experimenting with drugs, drinking, and running around. A nice, quiet, studious young man he wasn't. However, he turned out to be a marvelous chef with a great love of food, people, travel, different cultures and a marvelous sense of humor.
He exposes some of the well-known things, little tricks, and devious exchanges that are a part of the restaurant business. There are not only things you should know, but he explains what you can do about them, such as, do not order fish on Monday,(it is not fresh as it was ordered for earlier in the week), do not order stews or things with many different ingredients at the beginning of the week since it is likely to contain leftover ingredients from the week before. (You know, throw in some of that fish, a little of that old sausage meat, the veggies that are beginning to wilt, etc. Mix them together in a stew or something that sounds glamorous with a French name and people will order it with no idea of what it really is made with.)
This book will help you to be a smart consumer. For what you pay, you need to really know what you are paying for. You need to be armed with more information than just the fact that the unused rolls they remove from someone's table may wind up on yours.
The two great books you need to read are this one, "Kitchen Confidential" and "Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany" by Bill Buford. I promise you will find both of them fascinating.
I have worked in a very good restaurant and in reading this book was able to recognize the many truths that Bourdain exposes.
Tony comes clean about his years of experimenting with drugs, drinking, and running around. A nice, quiet, studious young man he wasn't. However, he turned out to be a marvelous chef with a great love of food, people, travel, different cultures and a marvelous sense of humor.
He exposes some of the well-known things, little tricks, and devious exchanges that are a part of the restaurant business. There are not only things you should know, but he explains what you can do about them, such as, do not order fish on Monday,(it is not fresh as it was ordered for earlier in the week), do not order stews or things with many different ingredients at the beginning of the week since it is likely to contain leftover ingredients from the week before. (You know, throw in some of that fish, a little of that old sausage meat, the veggies that are beginning to wilt, etc. Mix them together in a stew or something that sounds glamorous with a French name and people will order it with no idea of what it really is made with.)
This book will help you to be a smart consumer. For what you pay, you need to really know what you are paying for. You need to be armed with more information than just the fact that the unused rolls they remove from someone's table may wind up on yours.
The two great books you need to read are this one, "Kitchen Confidential" and "Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany" by Bill Buford. I promise you will find both of them fascinating.
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