[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
Katy,

You have to read Kitchen Confidential. You just have to.


Blarg,

Which of Tony's other books would you recommend? I saw he has a bunch of books out now. Are they really good or is he just riding the wave of KC for $$$?

[/ QUOTE ]

A Cook's Tour is good, especially the part on how much he loves Vietnam and the crazy stuff he ate there. A real honest love story for the place. It's not as good as KC, because KC had more of a structure, as a bio. ACT is episodic.

He's got another one called The Nasty Bits that I picked up a few weeks back but have only read one or two pieces from, but I like that too.

All in all, I think Bourdain sustains a good level of writing throughout his stuff. Even if some is better than others, none of it is poor, and he has such an active life that he's constantly in the position to have interesting stuff to talk about. With him, the stuff that seems a lesser effort is sometimes his latest t.v. show, which can suffer from having to fill time whether he has exceptional material or not. His writing is just stuff done on his own, so it doesn't fall short that way.

I'd definitely read the books in order, too -- KC, ACT, and then his other stuff. I think you probably enjoy later pieces more for knowing the story of the nut behind them.