Chef and author of Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain is best known for traveling the globe on his stomach, daringly consuming some of the world's most exotic dishes on his hit Travel Channel TV show, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. Once known as the bad boy of cooking, Bourdain is settling into an only slightly more dignified position as a professional gadfly, bete noir, advocate, social critic and pork enthusiast. He is as unsparing of those things he hates, as he is evangelical about his passions.

As executive chef at New York's famed bistro Les Halles, Bourdain is the author of the bestselling Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, a candid, hysterical, and sometimes shocking portrait of life in restaurant kitchens that has been translated into over 28 languages. His book "A Cooks Tour", published in conjunction with his series on the Food Network, was also a bestseller in the U.S. and the U.K. His latest New York Times bestseller, "Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook" is an insider's perspective on the changes in the restaurant business, from Bourdain's bad old days to the present. His other books include "Anthony Bourdain's: Les Halles Cookbook","The Nasty Bits", the crime novels "Bone in the Throat" and "The Bobby Gold Stories" and "No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach", an illustrated journal of Bourdain's travels.