Walking into your favorite restaurant, the aroma of your favorite appetizer and entrée fills up every part of your nose, your tastebuds water as you are super excited to stuff your stomach to maximum capacity. Going out to eat is something that many people look forward to doing and enjoy. The hostess greets you with a huge smile on their face, and you feel eager and welcomed and ready to put yourself into a food coma. Going out to eat is something that people like to reward themselves with after a long day of work. Although people do forget that there is someone working behind the scenes to please their guests at their restaurant, chefs also have long days at work, so where’s their reward? No one really knows what goes on deep inside the kitchen, no one really knows who is handling and cooking the food, no one knows anything other than what their stomach is roaring about and is ready to devour. After receiving your food that you were so longingly and patiently waiting for, maybe the thought runs through your mind about whom cooked your food and what their lifestyle outside of the food industry is like.

Anthony Bourdain, a high-end chef in New York, is the author of “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.” He gives the inside scoop about what the restaurant industry is all about and takes the audience in as if they are now pursuing a culinary position. After studying at different institutions and taking on different jobs within the industry, he gives little tips and tricks to other chefs in his novel as well. While Bourdain is known to be brutally honest, his advice and secrets definitely make consumers think twice about going out to eat.

Bourdain writes, “It’s all here; the good, the bad and the ugly” (Bourdain 5). Bourdain explains the cooking life as a long, love affair and he talks about how being a chef was something that he always wanted to do ever since he was young on vacation with his family in France. From that moment on, he discovered that the occupation was what he wanted to pursue for the rest of his life. Bourdain also reveals different principles such as what days guests should be staying away from seafood restaurants and to watch out for what is actually put out as the “specials.” Yet Bourdain does not intend to scare his customers away. Along with talking about the restaurant industry and educating his readers, he refers to the different times when he was highly addicted to alcohol and drugs.