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. “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 A 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—now with all-new, never-before-published material Anthony Bourdain was the author of the New York Times bestsellers Kitchen Confidential , Medium Raw , World Travel , and Appetites and the novels Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo . His work appeared in the New York Times and The New Yorker . He was the host of the popular television shows No Reservations and Parts Unknown . Bourdain died in June 2018. Kitchen Confidential Updated Ed Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly By Anthony Bourdain HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright ©2007 Anthony Bourdain All right reserved. ISBN: 9780060899226 Chapter One Food is good My first indication that food was something other than a substance one stuffed in one's face when hungry-like filling up at a gas station-came after fourth grade in elementary school. It was on a family vacation to Europe, on the Queen Mary, in the cabin-class dining room. There's a picture somewhere: my mother in her Jackie O sunglasses, my younger brother and I in our painfully cute cruisewear, boarding the big Cunard ocean liner, all of us excited about our first transatlantic voyage, our first trip to my father's ancestral homeland, France. It was the soup. It was cold. This was something of a discovery for a curious fourth-grader whose entire experience of soup to this point had consisted of Campbell's cream of tomato and chicken noodle. I'd eaten in restaurants before, sure, but this was the first food I really noticed. It was the first food I enjoyed and, more important, remembered enjoying. I asked our patient British waiter what this delightfully cool, tasty liquid was. "Vichyssoise," came the reply, a word that to this day-even though it's now a tired old warhorse of a menu selection and one I've prepared thousands of times -- still has a magical ring to it. I remember everything about the experience: the way our waiter ladled it from a silver tureen into my bowl; the crunch of tiny chopped chives he spooned on as garnish; the rich, creamy taste of leek and potato; the pleasurable shock, the surprise that it was cold. I don't remember much else about the passage across the Atlantic. I saw Boeing Boeing with Jerry Lewis and Tony Curtis in the Queen's movie theater, and a Bardot flick. The old liner shuddered and groaned and vibrated terribly the whole way -- barnactes on the hull was the official explanation-and from New York to Cherbourg, it was like riding atop a giant lawnmower. My brother and I quickly became bored and spent much of our time in the "Teen Lounge, ' liste