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Anthony Bourdain boxset: Kitchen Confidential & Medium Raw
A lot has changed since Kitchen Confidential - for the subculture of chefs and cooks, for the restaurant business-and for Anthony Bourdain. Medium Raw explores these changes, moving back and forth from the author's bad old days to the present. Tracking his own strange and unexpected voyage from journeyman cook to globe-travelling professional eater and drinker, Bourdain compares and contrasts what he's seen and what he's seeing, pausing along the way for a series of confessions, rants, investigations, and interrogations of some of the most controversial figures in food. And always he returns to the 'Why cook?' Or the harder one to 'Why cook well?' Beginning with a secret and highly illegal after-hours gathering of powerful chefs he compares to a Mafia summit, Bourdain, in his distinctive, no-holds-barred style, cuts to the bone on every subject he tackles.
629 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 2010
89 people are currently reading
296 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Bourdain
84 books5,638 followersAnthony Michael Bourdain was an American celebrity chef, author, and travel documentarian. He starred in programs focusing on the exploration of international culture, cuisine, and the human condition.
Bourdain was a 1978 graduate of The Culinary Institute of America and a veteran of many professional kitchens during his career, which included several years spent as an executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles, in Manhattan. He first became known for his bestselling book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000).
Bourdain's first food and world-travel television show A Cook's Tour ran for 35 episodes on the Food Network in 2002 and 2003. In 2005, he began hosting the Travel Channel's culinary and cultural adventure programs Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (2005–2012) and The Layover (2011–2013). In 2013, he began a three-season run as a judge on The Taste and consequently switched his travelogue programming to CNN to host Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. Although best known for his culinary writings and television presentations, along with several books on food and cooking and travel adventures, Bourdain also wrote both fiction and historical nonfiction.
Bourdain was a 1978 graduate of The Culinary Institute of America and a veteran of many professional kitchens during his career, which included several years spent as an executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles, in Manhattan. He first became known for his bestselling book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000).
Bourdain's first food and world-travel television show A Cook's Tour ran for 35 episodes on the Food Network in 2002 and 2003. In 2005, he began hosting the Travel Channel's culinary and cultural adventure programs Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (2005–2012) and The Layover (2011–2013). In 2013, he began a three-season run as a judge on The Taste and consequently switched his travelogue programming to CNN to host Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. Although best known for his culinary writings and television presentations, along with several books on food and cooking and travel adventures, Bourdain also wrote both fiction and historical nonfiction.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 2, 2013
To give it a 3 or a 4?
Kitchen Confidential is fun and entertaining. Probably a 4. Medium Raw just feels like Bourdain ran out of material. Probably a 2. Just read Kitchen Confidential and be done with it.
Kitchen Confidential is fun and entertaining. Probably a 4. Medium Raw just feels like Bourdain ran out of material. Probably a 2. Just read Kitchen Confidential and be done with it.
October 26, 2022
This book was a lesson in quality writing. Every sentence a delight to indulge in. The chapter titled. “Mission to Tokyo” will always hold a special place in my heart. What a talent. Rest In Peace Tony. You are the greatest food writer to ever grace this world.
May 10, 2020
I completed Kitchen Confidential, started Medium Raw, but thought better of finishing the second book. The box set was cheaper anyway!
As someone who often has dreams of being a restaurateur or a chef, this book was a reality check. Indeed, I was one of egotistic owners he talks about in his book at one point in my life. Funny enough, those dreams linger despite this book. Maybe its the introspection offered by Anthony Bourdain in the final chapters: what it takes to be the professional that he was and what it would have taken to be a different (better?) chef. There is a paradox here in that while it was his ego and foolhardiness that made him the success that he was, he also had the humility to point out that those same traits probably meant he was never destined for greater things and that's okay.
My favorite parts of the book were the beginning and the end. The genesis of Anthony's passion and dedication to the profession - so it seemed, with many things in his life - came from love and spite. In the final chapters, "A Day in the Life" was written quite beautifully. As I read the chapter, I felt as if I WAS in his shoes. Over the course of his long day, I was looking forward to catch my breath over the next a cigarette break as much as he was.
Yes this is a book about food and the restaurant business but more than that, it is a book about personal identity and the struggle to discover it and manifest it.
As someone who often has dreams of being a restaurateur or a chef, this book was a reality check. Indeed, I was one of egotistic owners he talks about in his book at one point in my life. Funny enough, those dreams linger despite this book. Maybe its the introspection offered by Anthony Bourdain in the final chapters: what it takes to be the professional that he was and what it would have taken to be a different (better?) chef. There is a paradox here in that while it was his ego and foolhardiness that made him the success that he was, he also had the humility to point out that those same traits probably meant he was never destined for greater things and that's okay.
My favorite parts of the book were the beginning and the end. The genesis of Anthony's passion and dedication to the profession - so it seemed, with many things in his life - came from love and spite. In the final chapters, "A Day in the Life" was written quite beautifully. As I read the chapter, I felt as if I WAS in his shoes. Over the course of his long day, I was looking forward to catch my breath over the next a cigarette break as much as he was.
Yes this is a book about food and the restaurant business but more than that, it is a book about personal identity and the struggle to discover it and manifest it.
June 18, 2013
Five stars for Kitchen Confidential, which I thought was brilliantly written and totally engrossing and only three for Medium Raw, which I found a little... undercooked?
Kitchen Confidential is a terrific book, one that I wish I'd read sooner because in Bourdain's telling the professional kitchen is really the world of work in microcosm and there is much to learn here.
Medium Raw on the other hand was more episodic than Confidential and though there were some interesting notes about where, when and how that book was written, it only harked back to it occasionally - more so towards the end - making it less of a companion piece to Bourdain's first book than their being published in a combined volume would lead you to assume.
It also - ironically, given comments that Bourdain has made about Confidential being very New York-centric - was very location specific, with plenty of discourse (entire chapters, even) that weren't really that meaningful to someone unfamiliar with the rarefied air of that city's elite restaurant scene and its key personalities.
Still I would recommend Kitchen Confidential unreservedly and this combined volume is a good way of reading it and getting some interesting information on its writing and what its principal characters did next - but you (to paraphrase Douglas Adams) "may wish to skip on to the last chapter which is a good bit and has Kitchen Confidential in it."
Kitchen Confidential is a terrific book, one that I wish I'd read sooner because in Bourdain's telling the professional kitchen is really the world of work in microcosm and there is much to learn here.
Medium Raw on the other hand was more episodic than Confidential and though there were some interesting notes about where, when and how that book was written, it only harked back to it occasionally - more so towards the end - making it less of a companion piece to Bourdain's first book than their being published in a combined volume would lead you to assume.
It also - ironically, given comments that Bourdain has made about Confidential being very New York-centric - was very location specific, with plenty of discourse (entire chapters, even) that weren't really that meaningful to someone unfamiliar with the rarefied air of that city's elite restaurant scene and its key personalities.
Still I would recommend Kitchen Confidential unreservedly and this combined volume is a good way of reading it and getting some interesting information on its writing and what its principal characters did next - but you (to paraphrase Douglas Adams) "may wish to skip on to the last chapter which is a good bit and has Kitchen Confidential in it."
May 26, 2013
God, særlig den første.
May 12, 2015
This was great... gave me a whole new respect and way to look at the restaurant industry and I will never look at an eating establishment the same way again.
January 31, 2024
This book is a romp through the restaurant industry, focusing on New York, that shows the good, the bad and the ugly of the food we eat when dining out.
Bourdain's passion for food is blatantly clear and his attitude of giving anything a go, no matter how outrageous, will make you cringe, laugh and perhaps heave, all at once. Though at pains to note that not all restaurants have dodgy practices, some of his accounts do raise an eyebrow and I for one will forever onwards be asking if a restaurant makes their hollandaise to order.
The writing pulls you through every emotion, experience, mistake, calamity, fight, friendship and success. He grabs you by the throat and dumps you in his kitchens - for better and for worse.
It is also sad to think that this mountain of a man is no longer with us. We are the poorer for his passing.
Bourdain's passion for food is blatantly clear and his attitude of giving anything a go, no matter how outrageous, will make you cringe, laugh and perhaps heave, all at once. Though at pains to note that not all restaurants have dodgy practices, some of his accounts do raise an eyebrow and I for one will forever onwards be asking if a restaurant makes their hollandaise to order.
The writing pulls you through every emotion, experience, mistake, calamity, fight, friendship and success. He grabs you by the throat and dumps you in his kitchens - for better and for worse.
It is also sad to think that this mountain of a man is no longer with us. We are the poorer for his passing.
December 30, 2025
My honest opinion, I unlike his other books I wouldn't pick this one up again. It started off strong with familiarity to his storytelling way of words, then continued on to be his rating of who he liked, and disliked in the world - all with a major tinge of judgement and grumpy man vibes. I know he has much better reads.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews