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MAP: Reading Rutabagas

Join Massachusetts Avenue Project’s Book Club, the Reading Rutabagas, to collectively read and discuss books related to our mission. Book topics and themes will include social justice, urban farming, food systems, and the environment. We are a Buffalo West side community book club!

Our mission is to nurture the growth of a diverse, accessible, and equitable local food system, promote economic opportunities, and empower youth through social change education.

Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.)

An updated and revised edition of Anthony Bourdain's mega-bestselling Kitchen Confidential, with new material from the original edition

Almost two decades ago, the New Yorker published a now infamous article, "Don't Eat before You Read This," by then little-known chef Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain spared no one's appetite as he revealed what happens behind the kitchen door. The article was a sensation, and the book it spawned, the now classic Kitchen Confidential, became an even bigger sensation, a megabestseller with over one million copies in print. Frankly confessional, addictively acerbic, and utterly unsparing, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business.

Fans will love to return to this 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--this time with never-before-published material.

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312 pages

Average rating: 7.88

181 RATINGS

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8 REVIEWS

Community Reviews

Anonymous
Jan 14, 2025
6/10 stars
While there are some interesting chapters the book dragged for me at points.
Barbara ~
Dec 11, 2024
8/10 stars
You can hear the crusty, cynical, arrogant, honest voice of the late and great chef. It's a rock star moonlighting chef who tells it to you like it is. I come from a line of family who owned restaurants and can say, "yeah, he's right."
Anonymous
Oct 15, 2024
10/10 stars
Listening to this audiobook with Anthony as the narrator was a pleasure. A dark dude, he writes beautifully. Loved every minute.
Anonymous
Jul 10, 2024
10/10 stars
I am not generally a non-fiction fan, nor do I consider myself a "foodie", but I LOVED this book, and I love Tony Bourdain. Fun, fun, fun. You will see restaurant staff in a different light after reading this.
Anonymous
Dec 04, 2023
8/10 stars
I've grown to love Bourdain by watching No Reservations on the Travel channel. The man is incredibly passionate about food albeit somewhat of an asshole from time to time.

I snagged the audio version of this book, read by Bourdain. It's actually an entertaining memoir about the underbelly of the culinary world. I really had no idea that restaurant kitchens could be as seedy and dangerous as a back ally in LA. This book was released in 2000 and in the end Bourdain swears he'll die on the line but obviously he's moved on from the kitchen to hosting food shows. Not that I'm complaining because I love the shows.

The reader treks with Bourdain through his discovery of actual food as a kid in France to his first kitchen job to the CIA to his many many restaurants that he worked at in his career. Reading some of this may encourage you to never ever ever eat in a restaurant again but you'll just have to get past that.


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