There are some books that every chef should read before deciding they want to become a chef.
Perhaps, even every person who likes going to fine dining restaurants too.
Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential will provide an entirely new insight to the life of a chef.
Yes, the book is particularly about his experience. However, his experience are like many others in the culinary industry.
I enjoyed the portion where he talks about picking money over talent. There is so much truth to that line in the culinary industry.
Often times, most young cooks are stuck picking between working at an amazing restaurant that challenges them and making a living. Typically, high caliber restaurants don’t even pay their interns (I worked for 4 months, 50 hours a week for free at my first place, Image how I felt when my friends told me they were making 70k at their programming internships). If chefs want to make money they might take working at a lower caliber restaurant that has larger profit margins.
This struggle is difficult, but well worth it in the long run.
Anthony is a brilliant author who takes his reader through the various snags in his life.
It isn’t easy to read sometimes as his life is filled with highs and border line barrel of the bottom lows. Most might be surprised that most of the places he was Chef at closed shortly after he left.
Nevertheless, you can see the talent he had as a Chef trying to make it in a brutal city.
To take a bit from the back of the book:
A deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade from Chef Anthony Bourdain, laying out his more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine—now with all-new, never-before-published material
Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.)
