Medium Raw

A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

By: Anthony Bourdain

Narrated by: Anthony Bourdain

Medium Raw marks the return of the inimitable Anthony Bourdain, author of the blockbuster bestseller Kitchen Confidential and three-time Emmy Award-nominated host of No Reservations on TV’s Travel Channel. Bourdain calls his book, “A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook,” and he is at his entertaining best as he takes aim at some of the biggest names in the foodie world, including David Chang, Alice Waters, the Top Chef winners and losers, and many more. If Hunter S. Thompson had written a book about the restaurant business, it could have been Medium Raw.

Unexpectedly Delighted

Bourdain can get on your nerves. I should know, after faithfully inhaling his No Reservations for years, and more recently The Layover, all the while noticing the shows' producers increased tolerance for letting Tony get away with (or encouraging him towards?) kinda lame stuff. To watch as Tony tosses back triple shots of straight (insert local booze here) with a local table-mate until the redness of nose and the inanity of banter chafes my patience, and is no longer good TV (I even found it tedious when I was still a practicing drunk). On the other hand, the Haiti and Beirut and Mozambique episodes are finer recent examples of how No Reservations works when it’s nurtured and cared for. It was this Bourdain I hoped to find in Medium Raw, and with some trepidation I procured the audiobook.

All hesitation was quelled after the first two or three chapters. I am pleased to say I’m now enjoying my second listen, revisiting themes and analyses the first pass threw down with such ease and grace. Whatever impulse Bourdain may have to tread lightly and boozily when shooting some of his less stellar travel drunkalogs is not present here. Instead we have a sharp noggin bristling with ideas and a witty blast of fresh and cheeky verbiage in the sharing of them. He’s got some of David Foster Wallace’s eye for detail, and hints of A. J. Liebling’s ability to communicate complex ideas about food and society in a few finely crafted phrases that get right to the nut.

Dear Tony, if Medium Raw is the Bourdain that the TV versions of you have been hinting at, then please give us more of this pen on paper stuff, as after all it was Kitchen Confidential that sent the TV scouts after you in the first place. Yes you’re fun and irreverent on TV, but you really shine on the page (and incidentally as the narrator of your own work).

a decent sequel

This sequel to Kitchen Confidential is very good, but Bourdain's ego and opinions get a little bloated and tedious. However, when he begins to berate the Food Network, it is the best. definietly download if you like his first book.

Brutally honest and endlessly entertaining.

I am a big fan of all the variations of Mr. Bourdain's TV show, which started off as "No Reservation". He is honest about his sudden success with his first book and his subsequent lifestyle that he was lucky to survive. He reflects on how clueless and rude his criticisms were in his first book and now looks back with the perspective of age and experience and expresses some regrets.

If you like this aging artist looking back on his life, his hipster, poetic, rock and roll kind of attitude, you will really enjoy this book. He's a great story teller.

A Great Sequel

It is like having Bourdain back. I love hearing his voice just one more time.

another great one for the great one

man just knows how to speak to kitchen people.. pretty sure he's my spirit animal