5 always. What an incredible person. I hope wherever he is, he’s doing ok <3

"Though I've spent half my life watching people, guiding them, trying to anticipate their moods, motivations and actions, running from them, manipulating and being manipulated by them, they remain a mystery to me. People confuse me. Food doesn't. (299)

"I don't know, you see, how a normal person acts. I don't know how to behave outside my kitchen. I don't know the rules. I'm aware of them, sure, but I don't care to observe them anymore - because I haven't had to for so many years." (245)

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly displays Anthony Bourdain's philosophical character, the underpinnings of the everyday culinary world (not the reality tv one viewers soak up on food network), and an elemental truth that lacks the bulls*t we in customer service know to be the real restaurant industry. It's full of grit, funny moments, bizarre coworkers, hardworking latinos that go unappreciated, Italian gangsters, overly optimistic restaurant owners, and the scars physically and mentally being in food service create. Bourdain's voice almost goes in the direction of Hunter S. Thompson, guiding us through the culinary underbelly. He brings up his screw-ups, frequent drug use, and his constant state of outcast him and his fellow cooks, sous-chefs, waiters, and other coworkers are placed under. Anyone in the restaurant business will fully understand this book and what Bourdain is referring to. The bouncing around of restaurants feels repeated at times, but otherwise this was a fun romp inside of the world of cooking.

Oh, Anthony Bourdain... How I love you! I have no idea why it took me so long to read his very first memoir. Amazing, hilarious, witty, educational, enlightening, entertaining, intriguing, original, honest... This should be mandatory reading for every first year CIA student. For anyone unfamiliar with this use, that is The Culinary Institutes Of America, Bourdain's Alma Mater, not The Central Intelligence Agency. Of course, (Fortunately? Unfortunately?, although I was not in the industry long enough to personally attest to its accuracy, I have full confidence in Bourdain's authority based on conversations with acquaintances whom have, as well as other research.

We read about his years as Anthony Bourdain, before becoming The Anthony Bourdain; his decades in all areas of the industry, horizontally, vertically, laterally, diagonally; from dishwasher to prepper to student to line cook to saucier to sous chef to head chef to executive chef; from eye-opening taste of vichyssoise to world-opening oyster to shanking fellow cooks to fucking fellow cooks to twenty hour days to alcoholic tendencies to five packs a day to caffeine dependent nights to unemployed heroin addict to heroin addict running a three star kitchen to unemployed sober to vowing to never be a chef again to running a celebrity establishment; from SoHo to 12th street to Market District to The Grammercy District to Theater Row to Connecticut to The Rainbow Room aloft The Empire State Building to gay-friendly to Italian Dining to French @ Les Halles... A chapter devoted to the lexicon of the kitchen, another to instruction on beautiful plating, one to Members of The Kitchen, another to the necessity of intimacy with the Sous-Chef (closer than a wife), one to a character named Adam-Last-Name-Unknown, one to a "Day In The Life" of a great chef, one to how anyone can appear to be a chef (provided one has interest in food, some intelligence, & an innate reasonable sense of flavor), one to what he calls The Wilderness Years, & seriously important "So You Want To Be A Chef?" Although, it is obvious to me that the entire thing is a "So You Want To be A Chef?"

Part memoir, part diary, part expose, part journalism, part textbook, but always honest, straightforward, informational, and funny. Read this masterpiece. Agree with his overstated (and often unnecessarily blunt) opinions or not, his insider information, extensive experience, witty insight, and unique views can hardly be denied to have authority.