08/08/2026
For today's , we are highlighting one of McKenna's favs! Rediscover the legendary Anthony Bourdain through his three early crime novels full of criminal cooks, bloody kitchens, and extra-sharp knives.
It was the seedy 1990s, and Anthony Bourdain was an anonymous headband-clad chef in New York. Sweating over gas ranges with criminals-turned–prep cooks, he loved the camaraderie of cleaving beef bones with the troublemakers of the world. It was all part of a good kitchen, and to him, it was art.
Bourdain’s first book, Bone in the Throat, was pulled from the entrails of this world. The mafia caper follows wannabe chef Tommy’s stint at a red sauce joint in Little Italy, unaware that it’s in trouble with the mob—and now he is too. After writing, Bourdain headed to St. Martin to “straighten himself out.” Soon came Gone Bamboo, a thriller that follows Henry, an assassin who thinks he can hide in St. Martin after a botched murder. Then Bourdain published Kitchen Confidential, the book that made him a legend. But before cleaning up his act for good, Bourdain had one final job: to write The Bobby Gold Stories, which follows Bobby as he takes a job at a mobbed-up club, then falls for a fiery cook who’s more trouble than he can handle.
Full of knife-slinging chefs, fast-talking criminals, and the kitchens that harbor them all, these books reveal Bourdain's mind before his fame.
