Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (2007, Paperback, Updated)

Anthony Bourdain serves up a tough, candid, humorous banquet of entertainment and information in Kitchen Confidential. From his earliest culinary experiences as a child in France- his palate for exotic food was captured while slurping a fresh oyster at age 9- Bourdain acts as a no reservations tour-guide into restaurant kitchens from New York City to Tokyo, divulging secrets that may cause the reader to consider whether going out to eat is EVER a good idea.

Bourdain handles his computer keyboard like a chef's knife, slicing and dicing a deliciously funny, delectably shocking, devilishly appealing buffet of words that lay out his 25 years of sex, drugs, and haute cuisine. Honesty and passion drip from every syllable as he shows, in memoir style, how his aggressive, addictive personality led him to become the galley master he is, instead of the assassin he might have been.

Some readers may find his swaggering style and language revolting, but true connoisseurs of food and words will find the ingestion of Kitchen Confidential to be quite nourishing.