Anthony Bourdain's Leadership Lessons from the Kitchen 🍽️

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With the publication of Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly in 2000 came a fascination with the seedier aspects of restaurants. The curtain-lifter, Anthony Bourdain, became the go-to source to regale outsiders with kitchen horror stories. The Harvard Business Review contacted him to find out his management strategies. If the hallowed chef could thrive in this chaos, what secrets could he share with the mere mortals who work in offices? Bourdain thought this was hilarious.

In the 2006 StarChefs International Chefs Congress keynote address, Bourdain explained that restaurants are not a microcosm of American business. Speaking before the 'Me Too' movement reckoned with the industry, he said that restaurants have no HR departments, fair hiring practices, or general political correctness. Instead, it’s “a free market wonderland” and “the last meritocracy,” said Bourdain, who had just aired the Beirut episode of No Reservations that would win him an Emmy. But for an audience of chefs who occupy this Wild West, Bourdain did give his rules of management and leadership—all with his trademark honesty and color.