I've recently been on a Bourdain binge; devouring hour after hour of his show on dvd, reading his works, both fiction and non-fiction, and coming to realize that, like so many craftsmen, it gets a bit repetitive after a while. That's not a bad thing, but it's a truism just the same. My favorite band of all time is The Rolling Stones, after all, and if anything is somewhat predictable, it is my beloved Stones. And so it is with The Nasty Bits, a heaping plate of older writings from magazines, etc...

Bourdain is at his best when he's writing about food, travel, or any combination of the two. Most of the essays in this book covered these topics, but I wasn't all that into the ones that strayed from them. Some of them were also so over the top as to induce eye-rolling at how superior and/or cool he thinks he is. I enjoyed the commentary in the back of the book, though, where he makes a note about each essay and how he feels about it in hindsight. Even he admitted to rolling his eyes at some of...

Video coming someday…

If you're a fan of Bourdain's TV programs (as I am), then you'll enjoy this collection of musings. It reads exactly as you'd expect it, with Bourdain's unmistakable style.

Oh, ugh. At least I got this for free. A series of "essays" by Bourdain, many recycled from various magazines where he'd published them. Actually, I started to be grateful for those, because some of those were at least readable. I liked his previous book Kitchen Confidential a lot, although I thought that his portrayal of chefs as heroes engaged in a noble war perhaps only slightly less difficult and dangerous than being in Iraq was perhaps slightly overblown. I liked the way he wrote about food...

A wide-ranging collection of essays previously published elsewhere made better by the inclusion of Bourdain’s comments on each of his own pieces. With the benefit of hindsight, he admits where his earlier writing was overzealous, where it still holds up, or where he was trading in high-level BS. Worth every last word.

Another new-to-me collection of Bourdain's, and while not as seamless as Kitchen Confidential, parts of this collection of essays is equally interesting, heavily laden with Bourdain's characteristic honesty, wit, and self-deprecation. I always appreciate books that make me think, and doubly appreciate books that make me stretch my vocabulary. This book does both while also making me remember the best parts of working in restaurants fondly without romanticizing the nasty bits. This copy also has

Collection of articles written through the years: mainly opinion pieces and travelogues, with one fiction short story. Should say I've only seen his show once and stumbled across Bobby Gold years ago, so didn't really know much about Bourdain before this. Found his writing an interesting mix of the arrogant and self-deprecating, posturing and honest. It was also better than I remembered it being. Found the commentaries at the back of the book funny since they offer a more balanced view as he ref...

Just for shits and giggles, every once in a while you try a book that's totally outside of your usual preferences, genres, experiences, and it turns out it's funny, elucidating, enriching, and in every way worth reading.This is not that book.

I'm a big fan of Bourdain's KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL and A COOK'S TOUR. In those books, Bourdain mixed his signature egomaniac writing with knife-sharp insights into his flaws as a human being, chef and foodie, not to mention humor. There was a sense of purpose to those books. He was telling a story that gave his writing a much-needed structure.THE NASTY BITS is a collection of articles and various writings that have been taken out of context and thrown together into a book. Anecdotes and/or observa...

Bourdain. Cranky, cynical, sexy, sarcastic, lover of pork. I love the way the man uses words, I really do. The Nasty Bits treats the reader to a delectable collection of Bourdain's non-fiction.The book is broken down into flavors: Salty, Sweet, Bitter, Sour... each story under those headings manages to leave you with that taste in your mouth. At least, I think that's from the story.*spits*No one does bitter and sour better than Bourdain, which is why I love his show. In the "Bitter" part of the

Like a beloved grandfather, this book tells the same stories/anecdotes over and over.

***RIP Anthony Bourdain 1956-2018***”Eating well, on the other hand, is about submission. It’s about giving up all vestiges of control, about entrusting your fate entirely to someone else. It’s about turning off the mean, manipulative, calculating, and shrewd person inside you, and slipping heedlessly into a new experience as if it were a warm bath. It’s about shutting down the radar and letting good things happen. When that happens to a professional chef, it’s a rare and beautiful thing.Let it

I should point out, for those who haven't read my previous reviews of Bourdain's work, that I am not an objective reader when it comes to him. So please, take this with a grain of salt."The Nasty Bits" is a collection of essays and articles written at various time through Bourdain's career and arranged by taste: Salty, Sweet, Sour, Bitter, Umami. The logic behind that classification is to represent the tone of the essays in each section, and the idea that they should leave the reader with that i...

I was 2/3 through this book when the news broke of Bourdain’s suicide. I would have been devastated no matter what, but this made it feel close and even eerie. The night before he died I had read his essay on addiction, and the eternal struggle to stay clean. It was one of the few essays not focused on food, and it was one of the best in the book. His honesty, his appreciation for other cultures and traditions (culinary or otherwise) were part of what made him so engaging. Just an incredible los...

The latest from my favorite sarcastic chef/travel show host/writer, this is a bunch of essays and one short story about food, chefs, murder, and travel. Much of it was slightly redundant since I watch his show Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations but I enjoyed the essays about Manhattan and Las Vegas, why he doesn't actually hate Emeril, and the relationship between food and music. It's books like these that really make me feel like even though I left the life of the cook, I still feel like I have

If you’ve ever seen him on TV, read one of his seven books, or eaten at his restaurant, you know that he really loves food. At least as much as me. Maybe even more? In fact, the guy is a little bit nuts. And probably not particularly nice. But, he is clearly in touch with his passion and I love him for that. I just finished his latest book, “The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones,” which is a collection of short stories, published and unpublished essays, diatribe...

The thing that Bourdain taught me is that you can study a culture through its food. He wasn't just finding the best noodles, he was asking: how do they cook here? How did they used to cook? Who cooks? He was doing a sort of food archaeology, digging down to find the purest food that a culture has produced, or even that this one neighborhood has produced, and what does that say about everything. It's a special thing, to take the world as seriously as he did.

Sitting home on a Saturday night reading a book has become a rather preferable way for me to spend my time lately. Perhaps I’m just getting old. So this Saturday it has come to pass that I finished the book I was reading. I just closed the back cover on “The Nasty Bits” by Anthony Bourdain. You all know who Bourdain is from his show “No Reservations” on the Travel Channel or his autobiographical “Kitchen Confidential” that I reviewed in an earlier blog. Bourdain is kind of like the punk rocker

Anthony Bourdain: An Alternate HistoryIf you can catch a dentist in a quiet, reflective moment over a drink, and ask what the worst aspects of the job are, you will probably get the following answer: “The pressure, the fast pace, the isolation from normal society, the long hours, the pain, the relentless, never ending demands of the profession.” If you wait awhile, maybe two more drinks, and ask again - this time inquiring about the best parts of being a dentist - more often than not, the dentis...