Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly #

Anthony Bourdain #

January 12, 2025

5/5

My memories of 2000s entertainment and, really everything, is very mixed. I don’t like a lot of music of that time and I don’t like a lot of television. I have no memories of Anthony Bourdain at that time.

I don’t really want to talk about the person, though its certainly very interesting. Maybe even that isn’t the right way to think about these things. Whatever my or your opinions are on celebrity and fame, I don’t think it matters for this book.

This is an excellent book, there’s really not much for me to say that hasn’t been said. Bourdain is, of course, an excellent writer, very much so in the vein of Hunter S. Thompson. Everything I’ve read here feels genuine, and that’s hard to say about a lot of authors, even ones I respect and greatly admire.

This book described my perception of the 2000s and the few decades before. I don’t remember anything of the 00s of course, but this is how I feel about it. I know this book isn’t a study on culture at that time, its a dive into the “culinary underbelly”, and it really does deliver.

I like this book a lot, and I really can’t explain why, it goes beyond restaurants. It makes me view a time that I have weird feelings about very differently.