Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential,” the memoir that turned an anonymous Manhattan chef into a household name, has been repackaged once again — this time by the UK art publisher Folio Society, in a limited edition featuring color portraits, a gilded edge and a $130 price tag.
The book was first published in 2000, when the restaurant and travel industries were booming. It went on to sell more than a million copies, was translated into 28 languages, and launched Bourdain from a little-known New York cook with a troubled past into a bestselling author and, eventually, an Emmy-winning TV host on the Food Network, Travel Channel and CNN.
Bourdain died by suicide in 2018 while filming an episode of “Parts Unknown” in France. He wrote several more books after “Kitchen Confidential,” but none replaced it as the work most closely tied to his reputation as a blunt, funny chronicler of what actually happens behind restaurant kitchen doors.
The book has been reissued more than once since its debut. Ecco, Bourdain’s longtime publisher, released an annotated edition in 2012 with handwritten margin notes from Bourdain, including lines like “eat the f—king fish on Monday already!” — a reversal of advice he’d given in the original text. In 2024, Ecco put out another edition featuring 16 pages of personal photographs selected by Laurie Woolever, who worked as Bourdain’s assistant from 2009 until his death and later wrote the oral history “Bourdain” and her own memoir, “Care and Feeding.” That 2024 edition also included a new foreword from chef Eric Ripert, Bourdain’s close friend, who appears briefly in the recent biopic “Tony” starring Dominic Sessa.
The new Folio Society edition includes a foreword by Joel Rose, a longtime friend, mentor and occasional collaborator of Bourdain’s. The two worked together on the “Get Jiro!” graphic novel series, which was recently adapted into an animated series on Adult Swim. Rose was the first to publish Bourdain’s writing, in the 1980s literary magazine “Between C&D,” which he ran out of his Alphabet City apartment.
In the new foreword, Rose recalls meeting Bourdain in 1984, when Bourdain was a heroin user bouncing between kitchen jobs. “He confided in me how precarious things were in his life,” Rose writes. “Financially, professionally, emotionally … He spoke of his confusion, his need to do something, his desire to accomplish something, write something, get s—t out.”
Rose’s then-wife, Karen Rinaldi, would later commission “Kitchen Confidential” from Bourdain as editor-in-chief and publisher of Bloomsbury USA.
A book that still resonates in kitchens
Many of the specific details in “Kitchen Confidential” — veal demi-glace, chive sticks — have fallen out of fashion, but the broader picture of kitchen life, from recycled buffet leftovers to the long-running tension between cooks and servers, is still recognizable to people working in restaurants today. Many kitchens have since adopted stricter workplace standards than existed when Bourdain was coming up, including ending the practice of free shift drinks and cracking down on sexual harassment that was once widely tolerated.
In late 2017, during the height of the #MeToo movement, Bourdain publicly addressed how his own book had treated that culture. “To the extent which my work in ‘Kitchen Confidential’ celebrated or prolonged a culture that allowed the kind of grotesque behaviors we’re hearing about all too frequently is something I think about daily, with real remorse,” he wrote at the time, as his former friends Mario Batali and Ken Friedman faced misconduct allegations.
Eight years on, interest hasn’t faded
Bourdain’s television shows remain widely available on streaming services, and his image continues to appear on T-shirts, murals, candles and tattoos. His life and death have been examined in the 2021 documentary “Roadrunner” and the unauthorized biography “Down and Out In Paradise.”
Caroline O’Kane, a Bourdain fan who works as a financial counselor in Westfield, N.J., said she thinks his influence was underestimated while he was alive. “In a time when influencers get to endlessly travel, we now glorify the guy who worked hard in a hot kitchen and seemingly could not be bought,” she said. “It’s no wonder his legacy is idealized now more than ever.”
Jeremy Solly, former head of marketing for Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore., said the triple-digit price tag shouldn’t scare off buyers. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable; new books today start around $40. For those who aren’t sensitive to price or are willing to invest in something they love, there is a market for it,” he said. “I own a first-printing hardback of ‘Kitchen Confidential,’ and I wouldn’t hesitate to get a beautiful new, limited edition.”
Not everyone embraces each new product tied to Bourdain’s name. Some fans argue he would have objected to the steady stream of reissues and merchandise built around his legacy.
