Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, by Anthony Bourdain with Laurie Woolever, is published by Bloombury Publishing, £18.99. There’s not quite enough of these reads for the book to escape being an impractical guide, but it’s still another serving of Bourdain: a tour of underdog cooks and Michelin stars, all patchworked together in a ping-pong map that you’d need a TV budget to follow in real life. Production assistant Nari Kye gives moving thanks to Bourdain for helping her respect her Korean culinary roots. TV writer Bill Buford, in Bourdain’s beloved Lyon, notes the cheffy seriousness hidden beneath his anarchic manner. We go behind the scenes at the Hanoi restaurant where Bourdain had a casual bun cha (pork and noodles) with Barack Obama. Bourdain’s brother, Chris, reminisces about exploring their native New Jersey and chasing up unexpected ancestors in Uruguay.

This isn’t a book to bag on the go, and it’s hardly in the spirit of Bourdain, whose nods to practicality are more along the lines of directions to Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog BBQ, near Charleston: “Way out in the weeds, off the main road, and good freakin’ luck if you can find it, is one of the most respected barbecue joints in the US of A.” It’s this irreverence we’d have liked more of.Īt its best, notably in the newly commissioned essays from friends and family, the book provides intimate insights. Destination entries (cities mostly, plus a few mega-bucks remote hotels) are often dwarfed by somewhat redundant practical transport advice.

The resultant scattergun atlas of Bourdania centres around select quotes from his TV shows Woolever’s words pad out the pages.

Anthony bourdain an irreverent guide