Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly” has become the best selling book on Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), despite the fact it was first published in 2000. The wildly popular chef and television star died just days ago.
“Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly” took Bourdain from the role of great chef to major celebrity. His first TV show “A Cook’s Tour” ran from 2002 to 2003 on the Food Channel. His second, “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations” ran on the Travel Channel from 2005 to 2012 and was replaced by another show, the “The Layover” which ran until 2013. His huge hit show, “Parts Unknown” ran on CNN from 2013 and until his death.
USA Today reviewed “Kitchen Confidential” in 2000. In part the review read:
Kitchen Confidential could be considered a book about the long and perilous road Bourdain took to become a chef at a fancy restaurant in Manhattan. A Vassar dropout, he started working at a seafood restaurant in Provincetown, Mass., and fell in love with the pirate glamour of the kitchen underworld. (He later went to the Culinary Institute of America.) But that doesn’t quite convey the machismo, the serious drugs, the hedonism, the wild debauchery of the life. As Bourdain stresses, were he ever hit by an out-of-control ice cream truck, he would have zero regrets about missing any of life’s pleasures.
The most notable thing about Kitchen Confidential is Bourdain’s ability to fascinate readers with how restaurants function. For example, how precisely they get all those entrees on the table on Saturday night. It’s the way Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full made
people interested in commercial banking: The secret ingredients are the energy and zest. Bourdain clearly operates with all six burners on scorch, and the result keeps the reader excited
Bourdain’s charisma and broad appeal will keep the book at the top of the Amazon list for some time. May he rest in peace
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