I love Anthony Bourdain & I loved Kitchen Confidential, so when I saw a hardcover copy of Medium Raw on sale at McKay, I bought it. Meh... It was okay. It wasn't bad, but Kitchen Confidential it's not. Medium Raw is basically a mea culpa for Kitchen Confidential. He tones it down a lot & explains why he gave certain chefs so much grief. In many cases, he apologizes & says he was wrong. Luckily, there is still angst-ridden diatribes like the one about Alice Waters. Man, he does not like Alice Waters. But these brutal attacks are few & far between. This book is mostly one, big love letter. He talks about how great his life his, how much he loves his family, how much he loves his job, how unbelievably lucky he is, how much he respects certain chefs, how different & hard the business is now & how sorry he is for some of the chefs he wronged in his previous book.
It's not a bad book. I enjoyed reading it. I think you should definitely read Kitchen Confidential first. It's been recommended that I also read A Cook's Tour, so I'm going to keep an eye out for that.
Meh, three stars.
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