Kitchen Confidential

B format edition of Bourdain's irreverent and brilliantly rendered memoir of his 20-odd years spent working as a dishwasher, line cook and chef in New York and elsewhere. As well as blowing the whistle on various dodgy restaurant practices, Bourdain recounts his gradual, slow-building love affair with food and cooking in great style, evoking the fraught, hectic atmosphere of professional kitchens from Cape Cod to New York and Tokyo and back again. Superb stuff. Bourdain will also feature in a forthcoming cookery series on Channel 4, and his novels; "Gone Bamboo" and "Bone In The Throat" are published by Canongate Books.