The Most Rare Anthony Bourdain Signed Books in Circulation

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Before anything else, Anthony Bourdain wanted to be a comic book artist. As a kid and teenager, Bourdain dreamed of being a comic book illustrator — not a chef, not a writer, nor a TV star. He sent a comic book that he drew, illustrated, and wrote to a literary magazine in 1980. Speaking at a Comic Con event in 2012 (on a panel for Get Jiro), Tony said his dream for almost his whole childhood and teenage years was to make comics. He “wanted to be an underground cartoonist“, and “was a collector and fan boy from really early on- early ’60s on“.

He was really into Marvel comics (especially the grittier, darker ones) and tried to draw his own comics for years. He even said that if he had any real natural talent, he would’ve pursued art full-time instead of cooking.

Before his untimely (and mysterious) death in 2018, he would autograph quite a bit at various book signing events.

There are many examples of books with either his signature alone, or his signature along with an inscription. Usually, they were to random individuals. On rare occasions, he would have known the person personally, or they had some significance such as being a chef or some kind of fame about them when he’d put in the extra effort to sketch out a chef. These are not widely known.

The following four books showcase the most rare Anthony Bourdain signed books known/ in circulation. All of them will most definitely have some variation of a chef sketch.

4.) Whimsical and macabre flair. This particular signed Kitchen Confidential paperback went to a chef named Thomas with the addition of a skeletal chef with a bloody knife. Is he a doubting Thomas now wondering why he let this go? This was claimed on reddit to have sold for nearly $3,000 on abebooks.

3.) Tony apparently had much to thank for these two folk musicians, Joyce and Harvey. Not only did he include a (bloody?) knife on the signed title page, but the preceding page features a rare chef drawing from about the waist up to the top of the hat.On another page in the same book, Tony included his personal phone number and AOL email along with his assistant Beth Aretsky’s phone number. This was in a hardcover copy of the Nasty Bits (circa 2005).

2.) This copy of Medium Raw was claimed to have been signed to the Tonight Show announcer Steven Higgens in 2011. Also was dated “NYC 2011”. The caricature on the preceding page is truly one of a kind.

1.) The “holy grail” for the Bourdain collector, this copy of Les Halles Cookbook is the most impressive you’ll probably ever find. It was originally given as a gift from Beth Arketsky (Tony’s old assistant) to David Feola (a chef that was also Beth’s neighbor for a time). It was confirmed by David that Tony drew the full sketch as a “warning” for being a young chef! Also signed by Beth on the flyleaf page. The Les Halles Cookbook is currently being offered on abebooks. Otherwise, you can always find a regular copy of Les Halles on Amazon (you might not get an original 2004 copy if you buy from Amazon’s new offer since Bloomsbury recently released a “20th Anniversary edition” of the cookbook. The signed Les Halles copy above is a true first edition, first printing).

Bourdain autographing No Reservations img under a CC BY 2.0 license (no changes made)