Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

This is just not that easy a book to read, and it is not all that easy to like either.  By all accounts, the man himself was down to earth, interesting, and people I know that have dined with him liked him.  So he is complicated, and I think that could be seen from his career and where it took him.
He is a man who loves food, although it is not clear to me from the book that he loves to feed people.  More what I took away is that he prides himself on his ability to obtain the best ingredients from reliable sources, and that his organizational skills made him a successful chef in a kitchen.  He very clearly describes the restaurant businesses #MeToo issues in spades (and for both men and women), the seamy side of feeding others, the things he would not do or order based on what he knows, and he also frankly discusses the pace and energy required, which leads to a lot of substance abuse.  It is a gritty book that made me leery of going out any day of the week on some level (although truthfully I read it in China, where the food on the street is incredible, and eating in a restaurant is delicious and affordable, and I really do not want to know where the food came from and how it was treated in the kitchen, I just wanted to enjoy it, and am sorry to no longer be there).  I think he is a food icon, and reading his work is well worth doing, even if it might be a bit painful.