Finding out that cooks often come to work sick and continue to prepare your food while suffering from major bleeding wounds was something of a shock. Finding out that a good chef will insist his cooks come to work sick and continue working with cuts ... well, that just boggles the mind. But only temporarily. Bourdain's backstage pass to the world of culinary arts is such a strange and marvelous trip, the reader's entire world vision is likely to be distorted.

Unless you've worked at a restaurant, in which case Bourdain's tale is simply funny, and true.

Much press has been given to the exposed secrets contained in this book: why fish should not be ordered on a Monday, why brunch is the meal of trash, why reused bread is perfectly acceptible, and why vegetarians are the most unhealthy people on the planet. These tidbits, while fascinating, are merely garnishes to the meat-and-potatoes tale of one chef's rise-- through drugs, through failure, through pain-- in New York City. I suspect this book has had the same effect on the restaurant business that Jim Bouton's Ball Four had on baseball ... folks who prefer to think of clean-cut chefs with French accents and funny hats are appalled, while the rest of us are just relieved to find out these masterful artists are only human, and not very nice ones at that. To quote Bourdain: "This business grows assholes: it's our principal export. I'm an asshole. You should probably be an asshole, too."

Another cool revelation is that the world really does begin with Adam and Steve. Bourdain's tale is mesmerizing on its own, but his descriptions of Steve (his longtime sous chef) and Adam Real-Last- Name-Unknown (a brilliant prankster and bread maker) bring the world of a restaurant kitchen bursting to life. Other unsavory but somehow delectable minor characters abound: Beth the Grill Bitch, the Silver Shadow, Bigfoot, and Cachundo the runner. Here you'll find out why the main ingredient in any cook's conversation is dick. Here you'll discover what effect cocaine has on impressionable caterers. Here, you'll even discover how to insult a grill man in three different hybrid languages.

Depending on how delicate your palate is, this book will either prevent you from ever eating out again, or give you the desire to become a full-time, dry-humping, overtime-working, obscenity-spouting genius of a three-star chef. In any case, it's a helluva read. A --Chris J. Magyar

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