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10 Anthony Bourdain Books to Grab Before the Biopic ‘Tony’ Hits Theaters
Discover the man behind the apron with these memoirs, cookbooks, and even crime novels
Stacia Datskovska
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August 4, 2026
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The Best Anthony Bourdain Books to Shop Online
‘Kitchen Confidential’ by Anthony Bourdain
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‘Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook’ by Anthony Bourdain
BUY NOW $22.99 Jump to Details
‘A Cook’s Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal’ by Anthony Bourdain
BUY NOW $22.95 Jump to Details
‘The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones’ by Anthony Bourdain
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‘Three Crime Novels: Bone in the Throat, Gone Bamboo, and The Bobby Gold Stories’ by Anthony Bourdain
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‘World Travel: An Irreverent Guide’ by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever
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‘Typhoid Mary’ by Anthony Bourdain
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‘Hungry Ghosts’ by Anthony Bourdain
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‘Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking’ by Anthony Bourdain
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‘Appetites: A Cookbook’ by Anthony Bourdain
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Anthony Bourdain made himself into one of the culinary world’s biggest names. Now, the chef, author, and television host is getting the Hollywood treatment with A24‘s biopic Tony (in which Bourdain is played by Dominic Sessa, of The Holdovers fame) hitting theaters on Aug. 7.
get tickets to see ‘tony’ in theaters
The film isn’t supposed to be a comprehensive look at Bourdain’s life and work. Instead, director Matt Johnson chose to use just two chapters of Kitchen Confidential, a memoir that effectively took Bourdain from underground chef to cultural icon, as its source material.
‘Kitchen Confidential’ by Anthony Bourdain
$8.25 $18.99 57% off
In Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain sheds light on restaurant kitchens’ darkest and most uncomfortable corners. It sold over a million copies in print and is widely considered to be a culinary bible — both a love letter to and a cautionary tale about careers in cooking.
Shop the annotated version here, featuring Bourdain’s first-person reflections made a decade after the book officially went live.
Tony is set in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where Bourdain got his start as a dishwasher and line cook at a local seafood joint in the summer of 1975. He’s 19 — a teenager finding his footing while getting burned (oftentimes literally).
Because Tony takes such a focused approach to its subject’s professional beginnings, fans might want to explore other sides of Bourdain’s life with the help of top books written by the man himself.
Besides the seminal Kitchen Confidential, which topped New York Times bestseller lists after his death in 2018, Bourdain is behind beloved works like Medium Raw (in which he examines the food world as it stood in the 2000s and 2010s, dishing out hot takes on gastronomic greats like Alice Waters and David Chang); A Cook’s Tour (documenting his encounters with foreign food in prose that borders on the erotic); and The Nasty Bits, a wide-ranging compilation of lifelong misadventures.
‘Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook’ by Anthony Bourdain
$22.99 $29.99 23% off
Bourdain serves up opinions about where the food industry is going and all that it has yet to achieve, sparing no graphic description or curse word in the process.
‘A Cook’s Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal’ by Anthony Bourdain
$22.95 $29.99 23% off
A Cook’s Tour is a tour de force and a byproduct of Bourdain’s incessant wanderlust. America’s chef takes readers from Portugal to Japan to Cambodia and beyond as he reveals the strange and endearing ways in which various cultures eat and what we can learn from them.
‘The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones’ by Anthony Bourdain
$18
Bourdain was never afraid to get down and dirty. Here is another heady look at his most thrilling and reckless escapades — one that you’ll be tempted to gulp down in a single sitting.
Bourdain similarly published multiple cookbooks, layering his trademark bluntness and sharp-edged humor in between pages filled with tried-and-true recipes. He is also responsible for three crime-fiction novels penned in the late Nineties and early 2000s, before Kitchen Confidential made him a public figure.
As it happens, Bloomsbury Publishing released a 608-page collection of these pieces on July 28, and you can buy it on Amazon with free, next-day delivery — making it possible to binge-read the page-turners back to back before Friday.
‘Three Crime Novels: Bone in the Throat, Gone Bamboo, and The Bobby Gold Stories’ by Anthony Bourdain
$21.99 $24 8% off
Evading the mafia while putting in graveyard shifts at a Little Italy red-sauce establishment? Fleeing to St. Martin to cover up a botched murder job? Going back to your vices after falling in love with a fiesty line cook?
All of these Bourdain-ideated storylines and more await as part of the new-to-Amazon Three Crime Novels.
As Tony would say, “enjoy the ride.”
‘World Travel: An Irreverent Guide’ by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever
$15
Also available in Kindle and audiobook form, this Bourdain book was co-created with Laurie Woolever, Bourdain’s longtime assistant and a writer in her own right.
Inside, you’ll find advice on how to visit Bourdain’s favorite destinations and do it right, from the dinner reservations to the transportation arrangements.
‘Typhoid Mary’ by Anthony Bourdain
$15.86 $17.99 12% off
Bourdain surprised fans when he unveiled this true-crime story a year after Kitchen Confidential, centered on the enigma that was Mary Mallon — an Irish cook commonly referred to as Typhoid Mary.
Capturing the typhoid superspreader through the lens he’s most familiar with, kitchens and chefs (and gritty ones at that), Bourdain demonstrates his range as a writer in the under-$20 Amazon buy.
‘Hungry Ghosts’ by Anthony Bourdain
$12.33 $19.99 38% off
Made in collaboration with American novelist Joel Rose, this is a horror anthology that blends the Japanese yokai, yorei, and obake mythologies with themes of eating (or being eaten). Peep Bourdain’s original recipes within.
‘Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking’ by Anthony Bourdain
$22.48 $40 44% off
A 20th-anniversary edition of a cookbook that immortalizes one of Bourdain’s most influential chapters — his time at the once booming, New York-based French brasserie Les Halles.
If you’re looking to learn the art of classic French bistro fare from a master, this is your best bet, replete with recipes ranging from classic (steak frites) to overlooked (whole roasted fish basquaise).
‘Appetites: A Cookbook’ by Anthony Bourdain
$22.49 $45 50% off
The circa-2016 Appetites was Bourdain’s first cookbook in more than 10 years, after the previous top seller hit the market in 2004.
It paints a more domesticized picture of its author, who had his first and only child in 2007.
Now geared towards at-home cooking and entertaining, the 300-pager will help turn even your hero sandwiches into something exquisite.
Which Bourdain Book Is Tony Based On?
The upcoming A24 movie Tony, starring Dominic Sessa as Tony Bourdain, Emilia Jones as his love interest (and future wife) Nancy, and Leo Woodall as a colleague turned buddy named Sal, is based on a few chapters of Bourdain’s memoir Kitchen Confidential. Published in 2007, the book has become synonymous with the late chef and is believed to be his most consequential work.
When Does Tony Release in the U.S.?
The Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony, directed by Matt Johnson, premieres in select U.S. theaters on Friday, Aug. 7 and releases wide on Aug. 21. Want to be among the first to watch the much-anticipated movie? Get your tickets here.
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