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kittenscribble's review against another edition
4.0
Companion to the TV show, a kind of behind-the-scenes look at Tony Bourdain as he eats his way across the world. The prose is rough around the edges and hardly neutral, but that's what we expect from Bourdain. His writing is snarky, but flavored with a real and honest admiration of the peoples and cultures that he meets.
bjork5ever's review against another edition
4.0
Well written travel stuff, but seriously I couldn't help but laugh at his pure unadulterated hatred of all things vegetarian, or even relating to vegetables at all. It's another white guy pretending he discovered travel, but it's well written enough that we can overlook that.
ehmatthews's review against another edition
5.0
A fun behind the scenes look at his first tv show. Hilarious and honest.
alavallee2754's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
4.75
adamz24's review against another edition
3.0
I don't get the Kitchen Confidential thing cause I came to Bourdain way late, via the later episodes of No Reservations and his brilliant CNN show (what?) Parts Unknown. On TV, Bourdain gets to deliver what he calls, justifiably and accurately, essays on places he visits and the food there. It is almost impossible to explain to people who haven't seen these shows what is remarkable about them. So what, they say. The guy travels from place to place and eats and puts the footage on TV. But there has never, ever been anything even close to either show on TV.
Bourdain lucked out. He got the kind of freedom to make the kind of documentary essay series he wanted to make. There are probably better journalists and better food critics but that does not matter. Bourdain, together with his small and trusted production team that has been with him from the beginning, has created something that on a week-by-week basis resembles a combination of food porn, personal essay, political essay, movie-buff-geek-out and Les Blank doc. And each episode is beautiful in the way few things on TV or in movies are anymore. Partly because almost every episode rips off about a dozen movies but nevermind.
Anyway, Kitchen Confidential does little for me because I'm interested in what the later Bourdain, the traveled Bourdain, has to say. Adventures in the culinary underbelly make for entertaining reading. Y'know: sex, drugs and foie gras. It's good when he talks about food. But the book has fundamental literary flaws. The characters rarely come to life. They're fleeting images, types of Bourdain's own creation: hard-working latinos, tough women able to deal with kitchen-worker bullshit, sexy women who affected his life almost as deeply as oysters did. That kinda shit. The book's mired in wise-ass nonsense. You get the sense that Bourdain really matured with travel. The Les Halles guy, not sure about him. But I would've been enthralled by the guy had I read Kitchen Confidential before seeing his later TV work. It's just odd going back and encountering a man whose mind was on the verge of broadening and becoming really compelling.
A Cook's Tour is not a way better book than Kitchen Confidential, but it's much more to my liking. Medieval pig slaughter in Portugal, a god-knows-how-many-course meal of various cobra parts in Vietnam, sumptuous writing on the highly underrated haggis and the incredibly under-appreciated lamb testicles. UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE-sounding sushi in Japan. Shady Cambodian towns of absolutely zero Romantic-type import but only tragedy. Here's my reading: the entire book is the Kitchen Confidential Bourdain's transition into the later Bourdain. He makes many, many comments on fiction he read in his childhood, on movies he loves that were filmed here and there, but he gives no indication of having appreciated the world for what it is. The book is an interesting mixture of disillusionment and joy. It is beautiful in many regards and infinitely superior to the raw, sometimes stilted television series that accompanied it (on the Food Network before Bourdain left to make No Reservations). It is a book of aromas and textures and deeply felt emotions. It is sometimes a book of rage (Cambodia) and sometimes exhilaration (Vietnam). Read it, but do not expect perfection.
Bourdain lucked out. He got the kind of freedom to make the kind of documentary essay series he wanted to make. There are probably better journalists and better food critics but that does not matter. Bourdain, together with his small and trusted production team that has been with him from the beginning, has created something that on a week-by-week basis resembles a combination of food porn, personal essay, political essay, movie-buff-geek-out and Les Blank doc. And each episode is beautiful in the way few things on TV or in movies are anymore. Partly because almost every episode rips off about a dozen movies but nevermind.
Anyway, Kitchen Confidential does little for me because I'm interested in what the later Bourdain, the traveled Bourdain, has to say. Adventures in the culinary underbelly make for entertaining reading. Y'know: sex, drugs and foie gras. It's good when he talks about food. But the book has fundamental literary flaws. The characters rarely come to life. They're fleeting images, types of Bourdain's own creation: hard-working latinos, tough women able to deal with kitchen-worker bullshit, sexy women who affected his life almost as deeply as oysters did. That kinda shit. The book's mired in wise-ass nonsense. You get the sense that Bourdain really matured with travel. The Les Halles guy, not sure about him. But I would've been enthralled by the guy had I read Kitchen Confidential before seeing his later TV work. It's just odd going back and encountering a man whose mind was on the verge of broadening and becoming really compelling.
A Cook's Tour is not a way better book than Kitchen Confidential, but it's much more to my liking. Medieval pig slaughter in Portugal, a god-knows-how-many-course meal of various cobra parts in Vietnam, sumptuous writing on the highly underrated haggis and the incredibly under-appreciated lamb testicles. UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE-sounding sushi in Japan. Shady Cambodian towns of absolutely zero Romantic-type import but only tragedy. Here's my reading: the entire book is the Kitchen Confidential Bourdain's transition into the later Bourdain. He makes many, many comments on fiction he read in his childhood, on movies he loves that were filmed here and there, but he gives no indication of having appreciated the world for what it is. The book is an interesting mixture of disillusionment and joy. It is beautiful in many regards and infinitely superior to the raw, sometimes stilted television series that accompanied it (on the Food Network before Bourdain left to make No Reservations). It is a book of aromas and textures and deeply felt emotions. It is sometimes a book of rage (Cambodia) and sometimes exhilaration (Vietnam). Read it, but do not expect perfection.
ohmygodlinda's review against another edition
3.0
Of the three Bourdain books I've read, this one is right in the middle. Funny and dishy as always, and Bourdain has important leanings insofar as traveling and writing that are right up my alley: eating and consuming alcohol. But I have to say that this book, while very enjoyable, didn't leave the sort of resonant impression that Kitchen Confidential did, and that when someone asked to borrow it, I surrendered it without a lot of second-guessing and possessiveness, which I find usually to be a sign, since nobody ever really "borrows" a book.
ceabooks's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Occasionally deeply insightful, sometimes superficial, this memoir of a year of travel and food hits differently reading it after Tony’s death.