He's the bad boy of the kitchen, the type of guy you'd never take home to meet your mother. Tall, rail thin and sporting a gold earring in his left ear, the native New Yorker is a self-confessed former heroin addict, smokes three packets of cigarettes a day and drinks like a fish. His mission in life is to find the perfect meal and he hates vegans - especially the ones from Berkeley, California.
Anthony Bourdain is our current chef du jour at a time when celebrity cooks are lucky to last longer than it takes their proverbial souffles to deflate. He may lack the lisping, chirpy excitement of Jamie Oliver, the seriousness of Gary Rhodes and his seasonal specials or the brashness of Gordon Ramsey. And he is no match for the Food Goddess. But then again, it would be hard for anybody to compete with Nigella Lawson's pouting sexiness, especially when there's a bowl of whipped cream in sight.
None of this appears to bother Bourdain because he's no fan of 'those celebrity chefs' across the Atlantic. In fact, he sneers, Oliver achieves the impossible and 'lies twice in three words' by calling himself The Naked Chef. Whether he likes it or not, Bourdain is part of the celebrity chef brat pack and will always be compared with Oliver et al. However, what sets him apart is his kamikaze approach to everything he does - and eats - and his wry, James Ellroy-type humour. Plus, he can write.
Bourdain burst onto the scene in 2000 with the launch of his book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. A kiss-and-tell account spanning 25 years - drugs, sex and all - of his life as a line cook in New York, the book literally jumped from the frying pan and into the fire, setting the literary world alight with its no-holds-barred account of the underbelly of New York restaurants.
So successful was Kitchen Confidential that the television rights have been snapped up by Darren Star Productions, producer of the now defunct Sex in the City, which plans to turn the book into a weekly series later this year. Bourdain is tight-lipped on the stars of the show. '[But] they are driving forward pretty quickly and I will likely be consulting for the show,' he says from his home in New York City. 'When I wrote Kitchen Confidential, I thought at best it would be a cult book. But now it's been translated into 23 languages. The prospect of turning on the television and seeing my life being played out is mind-blowing.
'I never expected this; to travel the world and hang out with chefs who I've admired. It has come as a surprise and I will go along for the ride as long as it lasts.'