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It now seems the market has quieted down for an Anthony Bourdain autograph book, and somewhat surprisingly there are still some gems left on the market. His most sought after is probably Kitchen Confidential, released in 2000.
His writing style is quite candid and clear, and filthy funny thanks to his blunt criticism mixed with the profanity. There’s a clip of him somewhere signing copies of KC and he goes “Being in this book is not necessarily a good thing”. This title was really a bombshell that exploded in the food writing world of the new millennium. And as a raconteur, he was brilliant.
While this wasn’t Tony’s first undertaking as an author (Bone in the Throat was five years older and there was another title from 1997), Kitchen Confidential was really the one that first shined a light on what really went down in NYC eateries in Tony’s early years; first hand accounts.
Signed first edition first printings are quite scarce, and if you do find one it’s more likely to be inscribed to at least one individual. Though you may never find one come into circulation with as cool of an inscription as “God gave us meat and the Devil gave us chefs!“, as a collector you still may come across a near fine or fine condition signed Kitchen Confidential hardcover.
A rare copy found on abebooks, this 3rd printing (first edition) Kitchen Confidential is in great condition aside from what appears to be light crinkling near the top and bottom of the spine on the jacket (at least the nearest fine signed example of his classic I’ve found), and it’s kind of hilarious that he signed it on a Food Network bookplate (he disclosed in Medium Raw that looking back he despised anything related to the Food Network). The image of him on the bookplate was also an exact image from a Cook’s Tour, so he likely signed it shortly after a Cook’s Tour came out, in 2001 or 2002.
The dust jacket is wrapped in a mylar plastic cover. Whoever originally acquired this copy did everyone a favor by taking this step, or at the very least kept it out of sight, out of mind?
More photos of this beauty:
