What to Read After Watching Tony, the Anthony Bourdain Movie
If Tony left you wanting to know more about Anthony Bourdain, you're in luck. Long before he became one of television's most recognizable travelers, Bourdain was a writer.
Tony, the A24 film starring Dominic Sessa and Antonio Banderas, takes viewers to a key moment in Bourdain's life. The movie follows the 19-year-old future chef, author, and TV host to Provincetown, Massachusetts. There, he becomes immersed in the chaotic and intoxicating world of restaurant kitchens.
It's less a complete Anthony Bourdain biography than an origin story. We are given a glimpse of the young man before Kitchen Confidential, No Reservations, and Parts Unknown made him a cultural icon.
So, what should you read after watching Tony?
Start with Bourdain himself. Anthony Bourdain's books reveal just how many interests were hiding behind that familiar voice. His books include restaurant memoirs, travel writing, cookbooks and even crime fiction.
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
If you only read one Anthony Bourdain book after Tony, make it this one.
Kitchen Confidential is the book that changed Bourdain's life and it's the perfect companion to the movie that explores where his obsession with restaurant kitchens began.
With his signature combination of dark humor, brutal honesty, and affection for the strange family that develops behind the swinging kitchen doors, Bourdain reveals what restaurant life really looks like after the dining room disappears from view.
Reading it after Tony gives the film another layer. You've seen a young Bourdain discover the kitchen. Now you can hear the older Bourdain tell you exactly what happened next.
Don't Stop at Kitchen Confidential: More Anthony Bourdain Books to Read
If Kitchen Confidential leaves you craving more of Bourdain's voice, add these to your reading list.
Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
by Anthony Bourdain
Think of Medium Raw as the next chapter.
Years after Kitchen Confidential transformed him from working chef into celebrity author and television personality, Bourdain looks again at the restaurant world, the people who inhabit it, and his own strange relationship with fame.
Read Kitchen Confidential to understand where Bourdain came from. Read Medium Raw to see what happened after everyone learned his name.
The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones
by Anthony Bourdain
For those who simply want more Bourdain, The Nasty Bits collects essays and stories about food, travel, restaurants, television, and some of his stranger adventures around the world.
It's funny, provocative, occasionally messy, and filled with the curiosity and unmistakable point of view that later defined Bourdain's television career.
Bourdain, The Traveler
A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines
by Anthony Bourdain
Before Parts Unknown, there was A Cook's Tour.
Bourdain sets out in search of what he calls the perfect meal, but the food is only the beginning. The resulting adventure carries him around the world as meals become a way to experience unfamiliar places, people, traditions, and cultures.
Choose this one if Tony made you curious about how a rebellious restaurant cook eventually became one of the world's most compelling travel storytellers.
World Travel: An Irreverent Guide
by Anthony Bourdain - Laurie Woolever
Ready to travel like Tony?
Created by Anthony Bourdain and longtime collaborator Laurie Woolever, World Travel: An Irreverent Guide combines Bourdain's observations and recommendations with practical information about destinations around the globe.
It's part travel guide, part tribute, and an excellent choice for anyone who miss watching Bourdain arrive somewhere new, sit down at a table, and discover what a place has to say through its food.
Bourdain, The Crime Novelist
Three Crime Novels by Anthony Bourdain: Bone in the Throat, Gone Bamboo, and the Bobby Gold Stories
by Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain, crime novelist? Absolutely.
Before many people knew him as a television host, Bourdain was writing fiction inspired in part by the gritty personalities and environments he knew from restaurant life. His crime stories offer another side of the writer behind Kitchen Confidential. Darker, pulpy, violent, and frequently very funny.
Pick this collection if the rough-around-the-edges version of young Tony was one of your favorite parts of the movie.
Bourdain, The Chef
Appetites: A Cookbook
by Anthony Bourdain - Laurie Woolever
You can read Anthony Bourdain or you can cook with him.
Appetites brings Bourdain's personality into the kitchen with the dishes he believed people should know how to make. It's personal, opinionated, practical, and unmistakably Bourdain.
If you are fascinated by the restaurant culture like I am, then this is an opportunity to move from watching kitchen life to creating something at home.
What cookbook inspired the food in the Tony movie?
Provincetown Seafood Cookbook
by Howard Mitcham - Anthony Bourdain
Want to experience a little more of the Provincetown that helped shape Anthony Bourdain? Pick up Provincetown Seafood Cookbook by Howard Mitcham.
Originally published in 1975, this quirky combination of seafood recipes, local history, illustrations, and Cape Cod folklore captures the food culture Bourdain discovered during his formative years in Provincetown. Bourdain was such a fan of the book that he wrote the introduction for its later edition and considered it a major culinary influence.
There’s even a direct connection to Tony. The filmmakers looked to Mitcham’s cookbook when recreating the traditional Provincetown clambake seen in the movie. Recipes for dishes like Portuguese Clam Chowder, Provincetown Paella, and Cape Cod Gumbo make this more than a cookbook. It’s a taste of the place and food culture that helped set Bourdain on his path.
Want to Know More About the Real Anthony Bourdain?
Bourdain told plenty of his own story, but reading the people around him offers a different perspective.
Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography
by Laurie Woolever
Longtime collaborator Laurie Woolever brings together stories from Bourdain's friends, family members, and colleagues to create a portrait that extends beyond the chef and television personality audiences knew.
If Tony made you wonder what the real Anthony Bourdain was like away from the cameras, this is a natural next read.
In the Weeds: Around the World and Behind the Scenes with Anthony Bourdain
by Tom Vitale
Producer and director Tom Vitale spent years traveling the world with Bourdain. In the Weeds takes readers behind the camera to show what it was actually like making Bourdain's television adventures.
It's particularly compelling after watching Tony. One story captures a young man at the beginning of his journey, while the other gives readers a look at what life became once that journey took him around the world.
What Anthony Bourdain Shows Should You Watch After Tony?
Your Bourdain journey doesn't have to end when you close the book.
- Start with A Cook's Tour to see the earliest version of Bourdain as a television traveler.
- Then move on to Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, where his combination of food, travel, humor, and cultural curiosity develops even further.
- Finally, watch Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. By this point, food is often less the destination than the doorway. Bourdain uses meals to start conversations about history, politics, culture, conflict, and the everyday lives of people around the world.
Anthony Bourdain Was Always More Than a Chef
That's perhaps the best reason to keep reading after Tony.
Watching Tony: The Anthony Bourdain Movie is like catching the first spark. You see the restlessness, hunger, and fascination with kitchen life that would eventually fuel everything Anthony Bourdain did. The best way to keep that feeling alive is to follow the story where Bourdain himself took it. Get that feeling through his books, his travels, his recipes, and the people who knew him best.
Start with Kitchen Confidential, then let your curiosity guide you. And if you want the most direct bridge back to the Provincetown world that shaped Tony, Provincetown Seafood Cookbook is the perfect next stop.
However you continue, the point is the same: Anthony Bourdain was never just a chef. He was a writer and storyteller first.
Not familiar with the movie? Check out the trailer.