Kitchen Confidential - The Complete Series

In Kitchen Confidential, Bradley Cooper stars as Jack Bourdain, a NYC chef who is working at picking up the pieces of his lackluster career after years of drinking and drugging. In the first episode, Jack is working as a chef at a Chuck E. Cheese-esque kid's Italian restaurant and living with his girlfriend--also the restaurant's manager. When he's offered the position of head chef at hip bistro Nolita, Jack sees his chance to rebuild his name as a great chef, and get out of the rut he's in.He assembles his kitchen staff from his old coworkers including: Steven, a British thug who's been known to cause plenty of mischief and will serve as Jack's sous-chef; Seth, a pastry chef with a crush on the hostess and a penchant for wearing bandannas as neckties; Teddy, an Asian seafood genius who has a volatile relationship with Jack; and Jim, the nerdy newbie who Jack inherits from the old chef. Together, the team creates an inspiring menu and helps put Nolita on the map as one of the new hip NYC restaurants.Kitchen Confidential takes all of the best parts of Anthony Bourdain's memoir and twists it just enough to make it entertaining fiction rather than verbatim retelling. Bradley Cooper plays the part of Jack Bourdain with just enough wit and candor to remind viewers of Anthony, but with enough of his individual style to make the role his own. The supporting cast are nothing if not hilarious, and the stories of life inside a kitchen will provide fans of shows like Top Chef and Hell's Kitchen with a little fictional fuel for the culinary interest fire. As always, Fox cancelled the show after only 4 episodes aired, but hopefully with the success of the DVD sales (a la Family Guy) viewers might be in store for more Kitchen Confidential in the future.

What's with all the red on white? It happens on the very first episode. Chop! and a chef's finger tip gets cut off, with blood splattering and squirting over a clean white uniform. Oy vey! or should we say, "Mamma Mia"! Then, the waiters have to search for the finger tip in someone's food platter, which is somewhere among all the other food platters in the dining room. I guess that's what happens with too many chefs in the kitchen with sharp knives and bad, arrogant tempers and big, fat mouths.OK, I don't recall any more gore in the other 12 episodes. There is a lot of witty banter, exaggerated flirtations, physical humor, lewdness, jealousies, weirdness, over-the-top humor, craziness, betrayals, drunkeness, infidelity, uncomfortable situations, situations that are "too comfortable" ... Well, you get the point. This would be called adult humor, although, it is not as explicit, (in some cases), as one would expect from my descriptions; this was a Fox TV show (with 13 episodes total) and it was within TV guidelines.In the state where I live, I think the expression would be that the episodes were "wicked funny". I'll just call the show fast, frenetic and funny and comedically crazy and absurd.Oh, don't forget the food: lobster, Portuguese eels, animal organs, rabbit meat, pastries, and so on; and there was even a little furry critter crawling about the storeroom in the episode with the food inspector.Quite enjoyable, though sometimes over the top, comedy that will make you laugh and sometimes cringe.

I feel weird about writing a content review when Amazon is just providing the media but here it goes! The DVD and packaging arrived in nice condition. I hate that I have to buy physical media but at the moment, Kitchen Confidential isn't streaming on any platform I can find. For a cheap price, I bought instead of pirated. Kitchen Confidential itself is fabulous. It was one of those shows that was ahead of its time by a few years and I believe it would have been super successful if it had come out after the celebrity chef/cooking show boom.

It's a real crime that Fox never let this brilliant comedy (they only aired 4 of 13 episodes) find an audience. Like "Arrested Development," it was canned way before its time. Bradley Cooper leads an ensemble cast as a fallen chef who is given a second (or last) chance to prove himself. He gathers a rag tag team and they mix like oil and water with the wait staff, with plenty of laughs and sexual tension thrown in. Some of the best episodes include "Rabbit Test," where today's special arrives alive; "Teddy Takes Off," where the temperamental fish guy wants recognition for his recipes; and the hilarious "French Fight," featuring Cooper's former "Alias" co-star as a rival chef who steals a recipe and starts a war. The casting is great, the writing witty, and the premise is fresh and far more entertaining than all the reality restaurant shows combined.Extras include a tour of the Nolita restaurant set and interviews with some of the cast who also seem dumbstruck as to why the show was canceled.Yep, they canceled this and yet junk shows like "Fact of Life" and "Full House" managed to stay on nearly a decade. And God help us, both live on in reruns.

A real chef tv show. Any real chef can relate and yes this is our lives and how we live them.