April 07, 2007

Kitchen Confidential

This was a great book. Bourdain provides a candid look at the culinary industry. If you have romantic notions of what chef's life is like, forget about it. It's hard, never ending, relationship straining work that imagine only very specific personality types are cut out for.

I entertained the idea of becoming a chef up until about 10 years ago when I met a women named Sharon who worked as a sous-chef before becoming an administrative assistant. She said it was awful. Really awful. She described most of her work environments as hostile and mysoginistic. Coincidentally so did Bourdain.

Before becoming a chef you should read his book.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You might also really like "Heat" by Bill Buford or "The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America", by Michael Ruhlman.

Both are very good and much better written than "Kitchen Confidential."