Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Kitchen Confidential is a nonfiction work by chef, author, and travel television host Anthony Bourdain, based on his 1999 essay, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” published in The New Yorker. In part a memoir of Bourdain’s years in the restaurant industry, it is also a candid exposé of New York City’s restaurant scene in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. Bourdain takes his readers on a wild ride through his career journey while providing a realistic window into the world of professional restaurant kitchens. Along the way, he dispenses advice for diners hoping to avoid bad service, stale bread, and old fish. 

Bourdain’s wry humor suffuses the book, although it also contains many moments of serious reflection and an unflinchingly honest look at his history of substance use, addiction, and mental illness. It reflects his deep passion for cooking, adventurous eating, and the appreciation of quality ingredients and diverse culinary traditions. The book is a love letter to the line cooks, dishwashers, food runners, and other restaurant staff whose hard work, dedication, and collaborative spirit often go overlooked by diners who attribute their meals to the chef alone. Bourdain touches on themes including Food, Passion, and Professionalism, “Street-Level” Cooking and Its Practitioners, and A Window Into Real Restaurant Subculture. 

This guide is based on the updated 2007 edition by HarperCollins.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of cursing, sexual content, substance use, addiction, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, racism, antigay bias, mental illness, and death by suicide.

Summary

Kitchen Confidential is divided into six sections: “Appetizer,” “First Course,” “Second Course,” “Third Course,” “Dessert,” and “Coffee and a Cigarette.”

The introductory section, titled “Appetizer,” clarifies that Bourdain loves the restaurant industry for better and worse. He hopes that the book will provide a behind-the-scenes window into restaurant kitchens, showing readers that their meals are the product of a hardworking, collaborative team of workers rather than the chef alone. He argues that chefs, although creative and hardworking themselves, are only one piece of the cooking process. He also notes that although he has some tough-love advice for diners that might reflect poorly on a variety of restaurants, chefs, and restaurateurs, he means no harm to any friends or former colleagues.

“First Course” traces Bourdain’s love of food to a childhood trip to Europe with his family. Just out of fourth grade and never having eaten anything particularly adventurous, he samples vichyssoise, raw oysters, and a host of other French delicacies. He is instantly hooked on good food and vows to try everything he is served. Bourdain gives a brief overview of his doomed attempt at a four-year college education and then dives into the beginning of his culinary career: a dishwashing job at the Dreadnaught, a seafood restaurant in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He works his way up in the kitchen, attends the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), and feels prepared and ready to embark on his career as a chef. Professional cooking, he is sure, is his calling. With a colleague named Dmitri, he opens a catering business on the side of his main job, and although the experience has its ups and downs, the two decide to make their way to the higher-profile world of New York restaurants.

“Second Course” begins with a detailed explanation of how a restaurant kitchen works and who actually does the cooking. Although chefs set and design the menu, oversee kitchen operations, and perform a whole host of other duties around the restaurant, much of the actual work is done by the cooks on the line, a series of stations that each specialize in one part of the cooking process or one kind of preparation (like grilling or frying). Bourdain highlights the work of everyone in the kitchen to show that a whole cadre of professionals is responsible for the food that they eat in restaurants. These people, he argues, deserve as much (if not more) of the glory that chefs receive. 

Bourdain then moves on to concrete advice for diners. He explains that bread does get recycled, but that throwing away entire baskets of uneaten bread would be wasteful. He notes the days on which chefs typically order fish, encouraging diners to avoid ordering seafood dishes on the days of the week when it is likely to be past its prime. He cautions against ordering brunch at restaurants: Omelets and other brunch “specials” typically contain food from the past week that they hope not to waste. He also breaks down the differences between restaurant and home cooking, showing readers how they can elevate their own recipes and produce dishes that more closely resemble restaurant fare. He ends this section with a hard look at the business of owning and operating restaurants, showing how difficult it is to be successful while highlighting the career of a friend who managed to stay afloat.

“Third Course” returns to Bourdain’s personal story, taking the reader through a series of positions he held early in his career. He makes lifelong friends and industry connections, learns key lessons about the industry, and works in a long string of kitchens, each of which teaches him something new. Bourdain profiles several high-profile chefs and restaurateurs, explaining his differences and commonalities with each. 

He has a tremendous amount of respect for jack-of-all-trades chefs, whose cooking skills are superlative, but who can also troubleshoot and fix any issue that may arise, from faulty wiring to bad plumbing. He also highlights the work of “street-level” cooks who, on the line in the kitchen, do the bulk of the work that goes into each dish. Bourdain and most of the kitchen staff he writes about party as hard as they work, and he misuses alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and other drugs. He reaches a low point both personally and professionally, and wonders if he should leave the industry entirely.

“Dessert” sees Bourdain reinvigorated and back in professional kitchens. It provides an in-depth look into the life of a professional chef, highlights the importance of the chef’s relationship with his sous-chef, and paints a colorful portrait of restaurant kitchen subculture. Bourdain continues to showcase his respect for line cooks and other back-of-the-house staff and clarifies his orientation toward work as a chef: He loves good food passionately, advocates for the use of fine ingredients, eschews waste, and values a well-run kitchen. He continues to showcase both industry highlights and pitfalls, along the way sharing the histories of key colleagues, mentors, and “great” chefs.

“Coffee and a Cigarette” features a trip to Tokyo that plants the seeds of inspiration for the next step in Bourdain’s career. He falls in love with the massive metropolis and the diversity of its food culture. He finds himself wanting to try everything and considers burning his passport so that he can remain in Japan forever. He ends the book with advice for would-be kitchen staff and a meditation on his career in the industry: He is proud of his commitment to quality food, his work running kitchens, and the many long hours he has put in along the way. He notes how many of his close friendships have centered around food and feels gratitude for both the positive and difficult experiences he’s had.

In the revised edition’s Afterword, written several years after publication in 2000, he notes his surprise at the book’s success and the extent to which restaurant culture has changed in the decades since he began his career. He also meditates on his newest job as the host of a food-inspired travel television show. He loves traveling but notes that he is still the most confident inside a kitchen. He also declares that he remains a social misfit, most comfortable in the company of kindred spirits or alone with a drink and a cigarette.