Here is an article analyzing how "Parts Unknown" would transform well kept neighborhood secrets into "Parts Well Known", a phenomenon which Bourdain is quoted on in past interviews gleaned for this report:
https://qz.com/quartzy/1377455/anthony-bourdain-wouldnt-appreciate-a-vietnam-food-tour-in-his-honor/
I should also mention I finished reading "Kitchen Confidential" and really enjoyed it. But I am very surprised that nobody has mentioned Bourdain's candid discussion of suicide in the book-at one point he graphically articulates his own suicide fantasy during a dark period in the 1980s, when he was doing lots of drugs, and at another point he mentions a friend who fires his Executive Chef for cause, leading to the Executive Chef to go home and hang himself. When the friend confessed his guilty feelings over the tragic suicide to Bourdain, Bourdain assuaged him by telling him that the Chef, a troubled fellow Bourdain knew, "simply could not handle the life", and that the result was inevitable. Bourdain ironically must have come to the same conclusion about himself, some 25 years later.
One thing Bourdain has given me with the book is how to use shallots in my cooking. Bourdain extolls the use of shallots in his cooking and I have now incorporated the shallot into many of my own dishes. I must say they are too strong to eat raw in salads, but they are great sauteed in sauces with meats.
