Anthony Bourdain, former chef, host of No Reservations and author of Kitchen Confidential, is the food world’s anointed bad boy, the guy people expect to say (and consume) the things others won’t touch. In his second memoir, Medium Raw, Bourdain upholds his image – by page 8, he is already partaking in a “wank-worthy” meal of ortolan, a small songbird that’s illegal to eat.

As in Kitchen Confidential, the writing is erratic, unfocused, rant-prone and entertaining. Here, the tale of Bourdain’s affair with a spoiled rich girl shares real estate with a fawning profile of chef David Chang and previously aired gripes about Alice Waters. The uniting thread? Bourdain’s opinion, of course.

Despite the author’s crass, colourful prose, many of these episodes read like leftovers. Bourdain weighs in on the “there’s shit in our meat” burger controversy, a subject that feels somewhat stale years after Fast Food Nation. His bêtes noires are dated, too: Who, in 2010, still cares about Alain Ducasse’s ill-conceived run at the Essex House in 2005? Perhaps Bourdain’s anger is so dusty because, let’s face it, life’s been good to him. How much longer can he run on toxicity?

The author spends a chapter classifying pillars of the food world as good or evil (and also devotes 14 pages to explaining why “Alan Richman is a douchebag”). While this will feed the blogs for days, Bourdain’s broad fan base may find the conceit too insidery. And how much weight does his vitriol even have at this point? See chapter one, titled “Selling Out,” in which our hero diffuses the disdain he once expressed for the Food Network: These days, he thinks Rachael Ray is a-okay.

Though Bourdain shows that he is capable of writing breathtaking culinary travel pieces (see his rapid-fire descriptions of global delicacies) and can rip someone a new asshole in a much funnier way than most, the lazily constructed Medium Raw comes across like puke on a page. He’s no longer the marginalised character from Kitchen Confidential. So what’s he still so pissed about?

Gabriella Gershenson