Anthony Bourdain Books in Order: What to Read After Kitchen Confidential

Anthony Bourdain is remembered as a chef and television traveler, but writing came before his fame. In fact, he published two crime novels before Kitchen Confidential made him a household name. Over the course of his career, he wrote memoirs, travel books, essay collections, cookbooks, crime fiction and graphic novels.

That variety can make it difficult to know what to read after Kitchen Confidential. The simplest answer is A Cook’s Tour if you want more food and travel, or Medium Raw if you want the closest direct follow-up. But Bourdain’s complete bibliography has much more to offer, including the posthumous Anthony Bourdain Reader and a 2026 omnibus collecting his three crime books.

Below, you will find Anthony Bourdain’s books in publication order, followed by the best reading order based on what you liked most about Kitchen Confidential.

Anthony Bourdain Books in Publication Order

Publication years can differ between countries and editions. This list uses the books’ original or earliest commonly documented publication years. The 2026 crime omnibus is included for collectors, but it does not contain three newly written novels.

What Should You Read After Kitchen Confidential?

For most readers, the best Anthony Bourdain book to read after Kitchen Confidential is A Cook’s Tour. It takes the restless curiosity and sharp observations of his breakthrough memoir outside the professional kitchen and into the wider world.

If you specifically want to see how Bourdain viewed the food world after becoming famous, read Medium Raw next. Published ten years after Kitchen Confidential, it is the closest thing to a direct sequel.

A strong five-book path is:

1. Kitchen Confidential
2. A Cook’s Tour
3. The Nasty Bits
4. Medium Raw
5. The Anthony Bourdain Reader

This route follows Bourdain from working chef to traveler, essayist and cultural observer. The final collection also adds previously unpublished material, making it a fitting last stop rather than merely a sampler for new readers.

Anthony Bourdain’s Memoirs, Essays and Travel Books

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000)

Kitchen Confidential is the essential starting point. Bourdain expanded the idea behind his 1999 New Yorker essay, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This”, into a candid account of restaurant kitchens, addiction, ambition and the people who survive a demanding profession.

The book remains compelling because it is more than a collection of restaurant secrets. Bourdain writes about kitchen culture from firsthand experience, revealing its camaraderie, damage, humor and pressure without sanding down its rough edges.

A Cook’s Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal (2001)

This is the natural next book after Kitchen Confidential. Bourdain travels in search of an ideal meal but discovers that food cannot be separated from people, place and memory. The journey also accompanied his first television series, giving readers an early version of the approach he would later refine on No Reservations and Parts Unknown.

Choose A Cook’s Tour next if the curiosity and storytelling in Kitchen Confidential interested you more than the restaurant gossip.

The Nasty Bits (2006)

The Nasty Bits gathers essays and dispatches about kitchens, chefs, travel and Bourdain’s many enthusiasms and irritations. It is less linear than a memoir, but that looseness is part of its appeal. Readers can move between pieces and hear Bourdain test ideas that would become central to his work.

The collection is a good choice for readers who want Bourdain’s voice in concentrated form: funny, opinionated, self-aware and occasionally confrontational.

No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach (2007)

This illustrated volume is closely connected to Bourdain’s Travel Channel series. It combines photographs with commentary from his journeys and offers a behind-the-scenes look at the crew’s experiences while making the show.

Because the visuals are a major part of the book, No Reservations feels more like a travel journal or companion volume than a traditional narrative. It is best for viewers who already love the series.

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook (2010)

Medium Raw revisits the food world a decade after Kitchen Confidential. Bourdain is no longer an unknown working chef. He is now famous, more reflective and forced to examine some of his earlier judgments.

That change in perspective makes the book especially rewarding. Bourdain still delivers blunt opinions about chefs, culinary culture and television, but he also writes about fatherhood, success and the cost of the persona that helped make him famous.

If you want a true Kitchen Confidential follow-up, this should be your next read.

World Travel: An Irreverent Guide (2021)

Bourdain began planning World Travel with his longtime collaborator Laurie Woolever before his death in 2018. Woolever completed the book using their recorded conversation and contributions from people close to him.

The result is part travel guide and part remembrance. It includes practical information, Bourdain’s observations and essays from friends and family. It does not read exactly like one of his solo travel narratives, but it preserves his perspective on many destinations that mattered to him.

The Anthony Bourdain Reader: New, Classic, and Rediscovered Writing (2025)

Edited by Bourdain’s longtime agent Kimberly Witherspoon, The Anthony Bourdain Reader is a career-spanning collection. It brings together writing about restaurants, family, travel and television while adding diary entries, unpublished short fiction and portions of an unfinished novel.

According to the publisher’s description, the collection includes never-before-published pieces as well as selections from across Bourdain’s career. Readers completely new to Bourdain can use it as an overview, but established fans may get more from it after reading his major nonfiction books.

Anthony Bourdain’s Cookbooks in Order

Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook (2004)

Named for the New York restaurant where Bourdain served as executive chef, the Les Halles Cookbook focuses on classic French bistro cooking. Recipes are accompanied by the direct instructions and kitchen attitude readers expect from him.

Bloomsbury lists the original hardcover as published on October 19, 2004. This is the cookbook to choose if you want technique, traditional dishes and a closer connection to Bourdain’s professional kitchen years.

Appetites: A Cookbook (2016)

Written with Laurie Woolever, Appetites is more personal and home-focused. Instead of recreating restaurant service, it centers on the meals Bourdain wanted to cook for family and friends.

The cookbook offers another side of the writer introduced in Kitchen Confidential. The swagger is still present, but so are care, domestic life and the desire to feed the people around him.

Anthony Bourdain’s Crime Books in Order

Bourdain published crime fiction both before and after Kitchen Confidential. These books are not part of one continuous series, so they can be read independently.

1. Bone in the Throat (1995)

Bourdain’s first book follows Tommy Pagana, a young cook who becomes entangled with organized crime in New York’s restaurant world. The novel combines mob violence, black humor and the kitchen knowledge that would later make Kitchen Confidential feel so vivid.

2. Gone Bamboo (1997)

This crime novel moves away from New York and follows an assassin whose Caribbean retirement is disrupted. It is faster, stranger and more exaggerated than Bourdain’s nonfiction, but his interest in criminals, outsiders, food and flawed loyalties is easy to recognize.

3. The Bobby Gold Stories (2002)

Despite its title, The Bobby Gold Stories is a compact crime narrative rather than an unrelated story anthology. Bobby is an enforcer in New York’s restaurant and nightclub world whose relationship with a chef pulls him toward danger.

Three Crime Novels by Anthony Bourdain (2026)

Bloomsbury published this 608-page omnibus on July 28, 2026. It collects Bone in the Throat, Gone Bamboo and The Bobby Gold Stories in one volume.

Buy the omnibus if you do not already own the individual books. If you have read those three titles, there is no new fourth Bourdain crime novel inside it.

Anthony Bourdain’s Graphic Novels in Order

1. Get Jiro! (2012)

Co-written with Joel Rose and illustrated by Langdon Foss, Get Jiro! imagines a dystopian future in which chefs hold enormous power and rival culinary factions fight for control. Jiro, a sushi chef, becomes trapped between them.

The premise is intentionally excessive, but it allows Bourdain to satirize food snobbery, culinary trends and the near-religious rules surrounding certain cuisines.

2. Get Jiro: Blood and Sushi (2015)

Blood and Sushi is a prequel, even though it was published second. It explores Jiro’s past in Tokyo and the conflict between his culinary ambitions and his family’s criminal world. New readers can begin here chronologically, but publication order works better because the first book introduces the world and its satire.

Anthony Bourdain’s Hungry Ghosts (2018)

Also created with Joel Rose, Hungry Ghosts is separate from the Get Jiro! books. The horror anthology uses a Japanese storytelling game as its frame, with chefs competing to tell frightening tales involving food, appetite and the supernatural.

Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical (2001)

Typhoid Mary does not fit neatly into the other categories. Bourdain tells the story of Mary Mallon, the Irish immigrant cook identified as an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever in early-20th-century New York.

His perspective as a chef gives the short book its distinctive angle. Rather than treating Mallon only as a medical case, he considers her as a working cook whose livelihood, identity and freedom were tied to the kitchen. Readers interested in narrative history or unusual food history should not overlook it.

Do You Have to Read Anthony Bourdain’s Books in Order?

No. With the exception of the two Get Jiro! graphic novels, Anthony Bourdain’s books are standalones. Even those graphic novels can be read in publication order without confusion.

Publication order does reveal the development of Bourdain’s voice, however. His early fiction shows that the restaurant underworld was already central to his imagination. His later nonfiction then follows his transformation from working chef to public figure and global traveler.

The Best Anthony Bourdain Book for Every Type of Reader

• For more of Kitchen Confidential: Medium Raw
• For food and international travel: A Cook’s Tour
• For short essays: The Nasty Bits
• For classic French cooking: Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook
• For approachable home cooking: Appetites
• For crime fiction: Bone in the Throat
• For comics and culinary satire: Get Jiro!
• For unusual food history: Typhoid Mary
• For a career-spanning collection: The Anthony Bourdain Reader

Final Thoughts

Anthony Bourdain’s books show that the voice readers discovered in Kitchen Confidential was never limited to restaurant exposés. He could write about a professional kitchen, a meal in another country, a mob-connected cook or a ghost story while returning to the same subjects: work, appetite, loyalty, exploitation and the complicated ways people care for one another.

Start with A Cook’s Tour if you want to follow Bourdain out of the kitchen and around the world. Choose Medium Raw if you want the clearest sequel to Kitchen Confidential. From there, the best path depends on whether you want memoir, travel, recipes, crime or comics—and every path reveals a different side of Bourdain as a writer.

Frequently Asked Questions

What book comes after Kitchen Confidential?

In publication order, A Cook’s Tour came after Kitchen Confidential. For readers seeking a direct thematic follow-up, Medium Raw is widely treated as its sequel.

What is Anthony Bourdain’s best book?

Kitchen Confidential is his most essential and influential book. After that, A Cook’s Tour is best for travel writing, while Medium Raw is best for readers who want Bourdain to revisit food culture and his own fame.

How many crime novels did Anthony Bourdain write?

Bourdain wrote three crime books: Bone in the Throat, Gone Bamboo and The Bobby Gold Stories. All three were collected in Three Crime Novels by Anthony Bourdain in 2026.

Is Medium Raw a sequel to Kitchen Confidential?

Yes, Medium Raw is the closest direct follow-up. Published in 2010, it examines how Bourdain and the food world changed during the decade after Kitchen Confidential.

What was Anthony Bourdain’s final book?

Appetites was Bourdain’s final full-length prose book published during his lifetime. The four-issue Hungry Ghosts comic series concluded in 2018 before his death, although the collected hardcover arrived later that year. Posthumous releases include World Travel in 2021 and The Anthony Bourdain Reader in 2025. The 2026 Three Crime Novels volume is a reissue of earlier fiction.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook