» The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones

The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: These bits make for a meal
Comment: If you like Tony Bourdain you probably will enjoy this; you may not love it, but it's certainly not a waste of time. The essays are classic Bourdain through the years: honest, angry, bored, frustrated, but, above all, hungry. There's even a sappy little Xmas fable thrown in just to show that he does have a bit of a soft side, especially for the industry that he so passionately adores. It's a very good book to carry around for when you have time to snag a quick read (I always have a book in my handbag and this was perfect) and there's a section at the end where he revisits each essay and updates the whys and hows each came to be. Best is when he admits to being a bit of a wanker.

Overall, I can easily recommend this. He's a good writer, honest and very interesting, funny and crude, and not easily dismissed. This is not a snack, it's most definitely a meal, one to be savored and remembered.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Not My Favorite
Comment: I love Anthony Bourdain. There. I said it. I would love to hang out with him, cook with him, and well, let's just say, do other things with him. Except read this book.

Bourdain is a genuinely talented writer, as he proved in Kitchen Confidential. He is a charismatic raconteur as he proves each week on his television show. But this book is a compilation of many divergent pieces, thrown together to attain maximum fiscal return. Because the tales vary so greatly, the reader is forced to jump from concept to concept without anything binding the pieces together properly. Don't get me wrong, each piece is well crafted, but just because they're all published together doesn't make for a cohesive book.

If you must read Bourdain, re-read Kitchen Confidential. It will leave you more satisfied than this book.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Love it!
Comment: This book was great. I love reading everything Anthony writes because you can hear him speak as you read it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great and all TRUE
Comment: Loved this, bought it's the second one of Anthony's I have ordered. I am a Chef myself and it brings tears to my eyes knowing someone else is being tormented by patrons and the front of the house. Very good reading even if you never have cooked a meal his humor and honesty makes this book GREAT.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Quick read
Comment: This is a collection of stories and experiences Bourdain has written about over the years. Some of them are very good, others a little over the top or even slightly boring. He has toned down some of his jabs at other celebrity chefs, trying to give balance and to temper past comments. If only I think to deflect any potential criticism of hypocracy, given that he has become quite the celeb himself. Some of his rants in the past have come across to me as a bit self serving.

It's a fairly quick read and is worth it for most of the chapters. It really deserves three and a half stars, but I can only give it three or four, so I selected four. I actually got some useful insight out of it. Also Kitchen Confidential was a real hoot. He talks about a few other books that were written during the last century, of which I think were inspiration for Kitchen Confidential. I plan to try and find them.

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