Which Anthony Bourdain Book Should You Read First?

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Maybe you've been seeing all the "Anthony Bourdain summer" memes flooding Instagram the past few months. If aesthetic collages of leather jackets, Aperol spritzes, tiny sunglasses, cigarettes, films, and vinyl records piqued your interest in Bourdain — welcome. Or, maybe you're a longtime "Parts Unknown" viewer looking to expand into the chef-slash-author's written works. Welcome, welcome all. In addition to daylighting as a food and cocktail writer, your reporter moonlights as a froth-mouthed Bourdain superfan. Quoth the superfan, anyone looking to get into Bourdain's books must start at the very beginning, which is, after all, a very good place to start.

Bourdain's seminal "Kitchen Confidential" was first published in 2000. Crack a copy and thank us later. The first writing of his that caught major public attention was a 1999 article that ran in The New Yorker titled "Don't Eat Before Reading This." This bitingly honest, sardonically-toned professional kitchen industry exposé formed the basis of what would expand to "Kitchen Confidential" — the bestselling book that launched Bourdain's written and on-screen career. As a voiceover, Bourdain waxes in "Roadrunner" (Morgan Neville's 2021 documentary), "Had I not become a chef, I never would have been able to f**k up so spectacularly. Had I not known what it was like to really f**k up, that obnoxious but wildly successful memoir I wrote wouldn't have been half as interesting." Fans who have already worked their way through the bulk of Bourdain's written works might return to "Kitchen Confidential: The Annotated Edition," which hit shelves in 2024 and includes a new introduction and handwritten annotations by Bourdain himself.

After these two reads, if you're still hungry for a third (and, frankly, each new morsel of Bourdain's acerbic prose serves only to further stoke the appetite), chase the taste. At this point in your biblio journey, Dear Reader, chances are you fall into one of two camps: Wanting to know more about Bourdain's work or wanting to know more about Bourdain himself. If you identify with the former, tuck into "Medium Raw," published in 2010. Or, if you're feeling inspired, pick up "Appetites," Bourdain's 2016 cookbook; filled with recipes from his personal life and travels, it's a bit more accessible than his French-style "Les Halles Cookbook," which came out in 2004.

If you're more curious about the man himself, look no further than "The Nasty Bits: Collected Cuts, Useable Trim, Scraps and Bones." This book came out in 2006, after Bourdain had seen several years of travel with his first show, "A Cook's Tour," and two seasons of his second show, "No Reservations." It's a collection of real, lived experiences, general witticisms, and musings thereof. If your favorite part of "Kitchen Confidential" was Bourdain's voice and storytelling, then this one's for you. Alternatively, while not written by Bourdain's own pen, the posthumous "Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography" was compiled by the writer's longtime friend and collaborator Laurie Woolever. Published in 2022, the biblically dense collection compiles chronologically-edited transcriptions of interviews from the people closest to Bourdain during his life. The result forms a personal, intimate, complicated composite image of the television persona off-screen, through the eyes of the folks who knew him best over the years.