Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook is a 2010 memoir by Anthony Bourdain and a sequel to his very popular Kitchen Confidential, a heavy-on-the-invective expose of the restaurant industry and kitchen culture. Medium Raw focuses on Bourdain's rise to fame, his experiences with television and his impressions and opinions of some of cooking's top names.

The structure is somewhat episodic, or essayistic - most of the chapters stand as well on their own as they do within the broader text, and their topics vary. One of my favourites looks at David Chang, the man behind New York's chic Momofuku Ko, who seems as full of ascerbic bluster as Bourdain is. The chapter's focus is as much on Momofuku's menu as on its proprietor and Bourdain describes his encounter with its haute cuisine tasting menu with maddening sensuality; I made the mistake, to torturous effect, of reading it while confined to a liquid diet.

The book also includes a sort of "Where Are They Now?" chapter on Kitchen Confidential's more memorable characters, a compelling, gossippy inventory of endings (only occasionally encouraging).

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