Kitchen Confidential Annotated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

A deluxe, annotated edition of Kitchen Confidential to celebrate the life of Anthony Bourdain, featuring new photo inserts

Over two decades ago, the New Yorker published a now infamous article, “Don’t Eat Before Reading 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 iconic Kitchen Confidential, became an even bigger sensation and megabestseller. 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, laying out Bourdain’s more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine. Including a handwritten introduction and annotations done by Bourdain about a decade after the book was originally published, this edition also features previously unpublished photos to accompany the now-classic text. 

“The kind of book you read in one sitting, then rush about annoying your coworkers by declaiming whole passages.” - USA Today

“Utterly riveting, swaggering with stylish machismo and precise ear for kitchen patois.” - New York magazine

“You’ll laugh, you’ll cry...you’re gonna love it.” - Denver Post

Bourdain captures the world of restaurants and professionally cooked food in all its theatrical, demented glory. - USA Today

“A gonzo memoir of whats really going on behind those swinging doors.... Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain is unique.” - Newsweek

“Bourdain’s prose is utterly riveting, swaggering with stylish machismo and a precise ear for kitchen patois.” - New York magazine

“[Bourdain’s] avalanche of colorful stories results in a goodly number of maxims to eat by; namely, never piss off the chef, lest he do the same on your mussels.” - Esquire

“Hysterical... in a style partaking of Hunter S. Thompson, Iggy Pop, and a little Jonathan Swift, Bourdain gleefully rips through the scenery to reveal private backstage horrors.” - New York Times Book Review

“Hysterical.... Bourdain gleefully rips through the scenery to reveal private backstage horrors.” - New York Times Book Review