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Anthony Bourdain

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Laurie Woolever

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8 min read

Age & reading levelAdult
Reader rating
4.8 · 4,981 Amazon ratings
reader ratings, not a LuvemBooks score
$24.99 on Amazon
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Front cover of Appetites: A Cookbook

Our review

Appetites

Appetites: A Cookbook by Anthony Bourdain & Laurie Woolever Review: A Candid, Personal Kitchen Repertoire

by Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever

Co-authored by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever and published by Ecco in October 2016, Appetites is a tightly curated cookbook that distils more than forty years of professional cooking and global travel into a personal repertoire of dishes Bourdain believed every home cook should master. This review assesses the book's content, structure, and reception from published sources — not a kitchen test.

$24.99 on Amazon
Interior spread featuring a meat dish with garnishes and hands preparing food, demonstrating bold, hands-on cooking techniques.Split image showing dark still life with grapes and produce on left, man in kitchen with candelabra and "Party 101" text on right.Interior spread showing two creative turkey presentations labeled "The Business Turkey" and "The Stunt Turkey," demonstrating bold culinary approaches.Tap to enlarge
Adultpervasive profanity throughout

LuvemBooks Verdict

Best for

Devoted Bourdain fans and home cooks who want an opinionated, personality-driven core repertoire built from forty-plus years of professional cooking and global travel — and who are comfortable with a voice that is frank, profane, and unapologetically partial.

Worth it if

You want a tightly curated set of recipes shaped by genuine personal preference rather than encyclopaedic coverage, and you value Bourdain's candid, foul-mouthed editorial voice as a feature rather than a flaw.

Skip if

Readers seeking a broad, technique-neutral culinary reference, or those put off by a consistently direct and profane tone, are likely to find the book's narrow personal focus and unmodulated voice more limiting than liberating.

Booklist awarded the book a starred review, praising Bourdain's "inimitable voice — funny, foul-mouthed, and unapologetically opinionated" and calling it "a cookbook that should be on every library's food shelves," as quoted on parnassusbooks.net. BookForum, also quoted on parnassusbooks.net, offered a complementary verdict, writing that Appetites "is also a really great cookbook" in addition to presenting an eclectic, expletive-laden portrait of family fare. Eater.com noted that the book, written with longtime collaborator Laurie Woolever, refocuses on the work of cooking and stands out as a visually distinct entry with edgy photography by Bobby Fisher and a cover by artist Ralph Steadman.

Sources: Parnassus Books, Eater
4.8from 4,981 Amazon ratings— reader ratings, not a LuvemBooks score

Preview the book

Front cover of Appetites: A Cookbook
Interior spread featuring a meat dish with garnishes and hands preparing food, demonstrating bold, hands-on cooking techniques.
Split image showing dark still life with grapes and produce on left, man in kitchen with candelabra and "Party 101" text on right.
Interior spread showing two creative turkey presentations labeled "The Business Turkey" and "The Stunt Turkey," demonstrating bold culinary approaches.
Interior spread featuring a man preparing food in a kitchen with accompanying recipe text and ingredient notes.
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Appetites: A Cookbook distils Anthony Bourdain's forty-plus years of professional cooking and global travel into a tightly curated home-cook repertoire, co-authored with longtime collaborator Laurie Woolever. Booklist awarded it a starred review and BookForum called it "a really great cookbook," praising both its recipes and its unapologetically opinionated, foul-mouthed Bourdain voice. The book is ideal for devoted Bourdain readers and confident home cooks who want opinionated guidance over encyclopaedic coverage — those seeking a tone-neutral culinary reference will find it a poor fit.
Is it worth reading?
For readers already invested in the Bourdain world — his memoirs Kitchen Confidential and Medium Raw, or his television series No Reservations and Parts Unknown — Appetites delivers exactly what they would expect: direct, profane, and deeply personal cooking guidance. Booklist's starred review praised Bourdain's 'inimitable voice — funny, foul-mouthed, and unapologetically opinionated,' and BookForum called it 'a really great cookbook' in addition to praising its portrait of family cooking life. The tight personal curation means it functions best as a companion to the broader Bourdain catalogue rather than as a standalone introduction to cooking, but for its intended audience it is a strong and coherent addition to any kitchen shelf.
Similar books
Readers who enjoy Appetites tend to gravitate toward cookbooks that pair strong authorial personality with practical home-cook guidance. Samin Nosrat's Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat shares the opinionated-but-approachable ethos, while J. Kenji López-Alt's The Food Lab offers deep technical rigour for cooks who want to understand the 'why' behind recipes. Stanley Tucci's The Tucci Cookbook similarly blends celebrity voice with genuine culinary commitment, and Molly Baz's Cook This Book: Techniques That Teach is a strong pick for home cooks wanting technique alongside recipes. For something with a comparably distinctive personality, From Crook to Cook by Snoop Dogg makes an entertaining companion. Those seeking a more classical foundation might also consider Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1 by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck.
Who should read this?
Appetites is squarely aimed at home cooks who are already fans of Anthony Bourdain's voice — readers who followed his memoirs or his television series No Reservations and Parts Unknown will find the most natural entry point. It also suits confident home cooks who want a tightly curated, opinionated core repertoire rather than a comprehensive culinary reference. Readers who prefer tone-neutral cookbooks, culturally broad coverage, or technique-first instruction are likely to find the book's strong personal focus and consistently profane voice a barrier.
About Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever
Anthony Michael Bourdain was an American celebrity chef, author, and travel documentarian. Laurie Woolever served as his longtime writer-editor collaborator and co-authored Appetites with him.
What's the tone of the writing?
The writing carries what Booklist described as Bourdain's 'inimitable voice — funny, foul-mouthed, and unapologetically opinionated,' and BookForum similarly flagged an 'expletive-laden portrait' as central to the book's character. The tone is consistent and unmodulated throughout — it is structural to how recipes are framed and justified, not decorative colour. Readers who loved Bourdain's directness on No Reservations and Parts Unknown or in Kitchen Confidential will feel immediately at home; those seeking a neutral culinary register will not.
How was it received by critics?
Appetites drew strong notices from food and literary publications. Booklist awarded it a starred review, recommending it as 'a cookbook that should be on every library's food shelves.' BookForum offered a complementary verdict, writing that it 'is also a really great cookbook' in addition to praising its portrait of family cooking life. Both publications highlighted the same dual identity: the book functions simultaneously as a culinary document and as an extension of the Bourdain persona readers had followed across memoirs and television.
Summarize this book

Summarize this book

Published by Ecco in October 2016, Appetites: A Cookbook was Anthony Bourdain's first cookbook in more than ten years, co-authored with writer-editor Laurie Woolever, who spent nearly a decade assisting Bourdain. Rather than surveying world cuisines or building a comprehensive culinary reference, the book boils down forty-plus years of professional cooking and globe-trotting into a tight repertoire of personal favourites — dishes Bourdain believed every home cook should master. By the time it was written, Bourdain had shifted from restaurant life to cooking primarily for family and friends, and that domestic pivot shapes the book's entire orientation. Woolever's role as co-author gives it an editorial coherence that solo-celebrity cookbooks often lack.

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Synthesized from verified book data & published reviews · How we review

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Our Review

We review the evidence: published critics, reader verdicts and BookTube reviews, gathered and weighed with AI assistance and edited by LuvemBooks, rather than one reader's first-hand take.

A cookbook that earns its starred reviews by being as candid on the page as its author was on television, Appetites makes no pretence of being anything other than one famously opinionated chef's definitive home-cooking list.

What the Book Actually Is

Interior spread featuring a meat dish with garnishes and hands preparing food, demonstrating bold, hands-on cooking techniques.
Interior spread featuring a meat dish with garnishes and hands preparing food, demonstrating bold, hands-on cooking techniques.
Appetites: A Cookbook is the product of a collaboration between Anthony Bourdain and writer-editor Laurie Woolever, who spent nearly a decade assisting Bourdain and co-authored this title with him. Published by Ecco on October 25, 2016, it was Bourdain's first cookbook in more than ten years.
The premise is deliberately personal: rather than surveying world cuisines or building a comprehensive culinary reference, the book boils down forty-plus years of professional cooking and globe-trotting into a tight repertoire of personal favourites — dishes that, as the publisher's description puts it, everyone should (at least in Bourdain's opinion) know how to cook. By the time it was written, Bourdain had shifted from restaurant life to cooking primarily for family and friends, and that domestic pivot shapes the book's entire orientation toward the home cook.

Significance and Place in Bourdain's Body of Work

Bourdain was the author of the New York Times bestsellers Kitchen Confidential, Medium Raw, and World Travel, as well as the host of the widely watched television series No Reservations and Parts Unknown. Appetites sits in that career as something of a reckoning — a man who built a public identity around restaurants and relentless travel turning his attention to what he actually cooked at home.
The book is written with what the publisher describes as the no-holds-barred ethos of those television series, meaning readers arrive expecting the same directness that defined his broadcasting and his earlier prose. Given Bourdain's death in June 2018, Appetites also stands as one of his final completed projects, lending it an additional weight it did not carry at publication.
Split image showing dark still life with grapes and produce on left, man in kitchen with candelabra and "Party 101" text on right.
Split image showing dark still life with grapes and produce on left, man in kitchen with candelabra and "Party 101" text on right.

Critical Reception and Voice

The book drew strong notices from food and literary publications. Booklist awarded it a starred review, with the assessment that Bourdain returns "with his inimitable voice — funny, foul-mouthed, and unapologetically opinionated — in this tightly curated collection of recipes," calling it "a cookbook that should be on every library's food shelves."
BookForum offered a complementary verdict, writing that Appetites, "in addition to presenting an eclectic, expletive-laden portrait of one's family's fare, is also a really great cookbook." Both notices point to the same dual identity the book wears: it functions simultaneously as a culinary document and as an extension of the Bourdain persona readers had followed across memoirs and television.
The voice — direct, profane, and particular about what it likes — is not incidental colour but structural to how the recipes are framed and justified.

Strengths: Curation and Scope

Where many cookbooks attempt comprehensiveness, Appetites openly refuses it. The strength of that restraint is that every recipe earns its place through the filter of genuine preference rather than category obligation.
The book's design intent is to give home cooks a practical, opinionated core repertoire rather than an encyclopaedic shelf reference — a different and arguably more useful ambition for the reader who wants guidance on what to actually cook rather than a survey of what is theoretically possible. Woolever's role as co-author and longtime collaborator gives the book an editorial coherence that solo-celebrity cookbooks sometimes lack; the text reflects a working relationship with the material rather than a name-only attachment.

Limitations and Who May Be Frustrated

The same qualities that give Appetites its personality also define its limits. Readers seeking a culturally broad or technique-neutral cookbook will find instead a collection shaped entirely by one man's strong and specific tastes.
The foul-mouthed, unapologetically opinionated voice that Booklist and BookForum both flag as a strength is, for some audiences, a barrier — the tone is consistent and unmodulated throughout, which suits devoted Bourdain readers and may alienate those who come to the book primarily as a culinary tool. The book's tight personal focus means it functions best as a companion to the broader Bourdain catalogue rather than as a standalone introduction to cooking.

Sources & Further Reading

The key facts and claims in this review are grounded in the retrieved, verified sources listed below.

  1. Cited in this review
  2. 1
    Appetites: A Cookbook by Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble®

    barnesandnoble.com

  3. 2
    Appetites by Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever - NoDesk

    nodesk.co

  4. Further reading
  5. 3
    Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever — author profileHigh-authority source

    Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever, Wikipedia

  6. 4
    Appetites : A Cookbook by Anthony Bourdain; Laurie Woolever

    booksamillion.com

  7. 5
    Appetites, A Cookbook, by Anthony Bourdain, with Laurie Woolever – SEVEN CIRCUMSTANCES

    sevencircumstances.com

  8. 6
    Appetites : A Cookbook

    booklarder.com

  9. 7
    Appetites: A Cookbook (Hardcover) | Parnassus Books

    parnassusbooks.net

  10. 8
    Appetites: A Cookbook by Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever on J. Michaels Books

    jmichaelsbooks.com

  11. 9
    Appetites: A Cookbook | Powell's Books

    powells.com

  12. 10
    Appetites: A Cookbook - Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever - Google Books

    books.google.com

  13. 11
    Eater

    Eater

Age & Reading Level

Recommended age

Adult

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Content to know about

pervasive profanity throughout

Skip if you want a tone-neutral, culturally broad culinary reference rather than a strongly voiced personal repertoire.

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