Showing posts with label restaurant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restaurant. Show all posts

41% Off Discounts: Special Prices for Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.) Review

Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.)

Are you looking to buy Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.)? here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.). check out the link below:

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Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.) Review

In this book, Anthony Bourdain, executive chef at New York's Brasserie Les Halles, takes us on a wild ride through that city's food supply industry that includes surprises such as heavy drinking, drugs, debauchery, Mafiosi and assorted seedy personalities.
It is clear that Bourdain enjoys a true passion for both food and cooking, a passion he inherited from the French side of his family. He tells us he decided to become a chef during a trip to southwestern France when he was only ten years of age and it is a decision he stuck to, graduating from the Culinary Institute of America.
Kitchen Confidential is a surprisingly well-written account of what life is really like in the commercial kitchens of the United States; "the dark recesses of the restaurant underbelly." In describing these dark recesses, Bourdain refreshingly casts as many stones at himself as he does at others. In fact, he is brutally honest. There is nothing as tiresome as a "tell-all" book in which the author relentlessly paints himself as the unwitting victim. Bourdain, to his enormous credit, avoids this trap. Maybe he writes so convincingly about drugs and alcohol because drugs and alcohol have run their course through his veins as well as those of others.
The rather raunchy "pirate ship" stories contained in this fascinating but testosterone-rich book help to bring it vividly to life and add tremendous credibility. The book does tend to discourage any would-be female chefs who might read it, but that's not Bourdain's fault; he is simply telling it like it is and telling it hilariously as well.
In an entire chapter devoted to one of the lively and crude characters that populate this book, Bourdain describes a man named Adam: "Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown, the psychotic bread-baker, alone in his small, filthy Upper West Side apartment, his eyes two different sizes after a 36-hour coke and liquor jag, white crust accumulated at the corners of his mouth, a two-day growh of whiskers--standing there in a shirt and no pants among the porno mags, the empty Chinese takeout containers, as the Spice channel flickers silently on the TV, throwing blue light on a can of Dinty Moore beef stew by an unmade bed." Apparently Bourdain made just as many mistakes at the beginning of his career as did Adam, but the book however, doesn't always paint and bleak picture.
Another chapter entitled "The Life of Bryan," talks about renowned chef Scott Bryan, a man, who, according to Bourdain, made all the right decisions. Bourdain describes Bryan's shining, immaculate kitchen, his well-organized and efficient staff. It's respectful homage, but somehow, we feel that Bourdain, himself, will never be quite as organized as is Bryan, for Bourdain is just too much of the rebel, the original, the maverick.
Kitchen Confidential can be informative as well as wickedly funny. Bourdain is hilarious as he tells us what to order in restaurants and when. For instance, we learn never to eat fish on Mondays, to avoid Sunday brunches and never to order any sort of meat well-done. And, if we ever see a sign that says, "Discount Sushi," we will, if we are smart, run the other way as fast as we possibly can.
Kitchen Confidential isn't undying literature but it's so funny and so well-written that no one should care. It made me hungry for Bourdain's black sea bass crusted in sel de Bretagne with frites. It also made me order his novel, Bone in the Throat. If it is only half as funny and wickedly well-written as is Kitchen Confidential it will certainly be a treat.

Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.) Overview



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43% Off Discounts: Lowest Price Diners, Drive-ins and Dives: An All-American Road Trip . . . with Recipes (Food Network) Review

Diners, Drive-ins and Dives: An All-American Road Trip . . . with Recipes (Food Network)

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Diners, Drive-ins and Dives: An All-American Road Trip . . . with Recipes (Food Network) Review

I really wanted to LOVE this book, I really did. I'm such a huge fan of Guy Fieri's "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" television show, and I've been hoping he'd come out with a cookbook containing recipes featured on his shows.
I'm a sucker for great road food, and often go out of my way to try a "hole in the wall" diner. Guy has traveled the US highlighting exactly the kinds of places I love to visit. His show on Food Network is loads of fun. No one can describe food like Guy, with his blend of humor and killer adjectives.
The humor doesn't translate all that well in print, and the jokes just aren't that funny. But I didn't get this book for the jokes -- I got it for the recipes.
The recipes that are included are OK -- but if you're a fan of the show, don't expect to find very many of the dishes Guy spotlighted. There are a few (the Cap'n Crunch French Toast from the Blue Moon Cafe in Baltimore, for example), but the bulk of the recipes are "new."
It was more than a little frustrating to read about the wonderful dishes in Guy's descriptions of the restaurant, only to find few recipes for any of them. While each establishment is represented by a recipe, almost none of the recipes are described in the narrative.
For example, Baby Blues Bar-B-Q in Venice, CA -- Guy waxes rhapsodic over the "killer mac and cheese made from four cheeses" and "grilled corn with chipotle-poblano butter and cotijo cheese sprinked on top." The featured recipe: sautéed okra. Huh?
That's not to say these are not GOOD recipes -- in fact, most of them look pretty darned tasty. And if your expectations don't include recipes for dishes featured on the show, these will be just fine.
As a travelogue, it's probably OK, too. And maybe that was its intended purpose, rather than a "cookbook." Or maybe it can't really decide what it wants to be.
But if you're like me, you might be a little disappointed that the dishes included in the book are NOT the ones that made your mouth water when you watched the show OR read about them here.

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