The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain

Through a series of articles written over the last year or so from his travels and writing assignments, we are once again plunged into the gritty reality of travel, food, and a chefs world as explained byAnthony Bourdain. And, like Kitchen Confidential, he doesn't sugar coat reality...just the opposite perhaps...he gives us the grimy, the grease trap remnants, the world as it is view of food. Thus the full name of the book: The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps and Bones.

And I liked it.

Bourdain is raw. Raw like the oysters he loves . Raw as in "Noo Yawk" raw. Raw like the offal meats he's always pontificating about. He compares eating to sex, leads Michael Ruhlman on a foodie version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (I saw that episode of No Reservations!), bombast's English pubs for going vegetarian, rants against Woody Harrelson and his "raw food movement", and again describes his love of all food. Especially the food produced by the average person in Saigon, China, Rio de Janerio, Taiwan, anywhere at all actually. To him, street food is a sublime as any meal produced by Thomas Keller of French Laundry fame.

And sugar never comes into it. Bourdain is not here to tell us how much fun it is to be a celebrity chef, he's not here to tell us about the next up and coming young chef, nor to wax poetic about the newest food trend. His books are not for those who turn starry eye gazes upon Bobby Flay, Emril, Mario Batali, placing these and other celebrity chefs upon doric columns garnished with flowering herbs.

What you are going to get are the varietal cuts, usable trim, scraps and bones with a solid peppering of colorful language sprinkled throughout.

Yum yum.