Is there anything founders love more than talking about the triumphs and tribulations of people we admire?

We relish the stories, the ups and downs and the emotional rollercoasters they endure, in hopes that we too might overcome all the bullsh*t and find success…

That’s why we love autobiographies — we hear first hand the inside scoop on the stories and mania that helped shape companies from Nike to Berkshire to Apple to Amazon. 

I love those books, I even shared my top 25 business reads a few months ago — but chef memoirs? They’re my guilty-pleasure romance paperbacks, except with fires, fish mongers, f*ck ups, and a lot more fun.

Chef memoirs aren’t just about food. They’re about debauchery, pressure, resilience, and  persistence — the same kind of sh*t founders wrestle with daily. 

These 11 stand out for revealing what it takes to survive impossible kitchens, reinvent yourself under fire, and keep working long after everyone else has moved on.

If you’ve ever watched Iron Chef, you know our boy Marcus. Samuelsson’s memoir traces his pretty unique journey from Ethiopia to Sweden to New York, then onto building Harlem’s Red Rooster.

Critics call it “a sensitive and compelling account of his rise…and his extraordinary life” and what I love are the stories of his childhood, how he blends ambition with grounded observations on identity and inequality in the culinary world.

This one’s a bit more under-the-radar, less flashy, but if you’re a lover of food, you’ll enjoy it. Pépin’s style is easy-going, proud, and masterful, and his memoir is full of humble + hustle, stories of Howard Johnson’s, and leaving a White House position to work mass-scale food. There’s a really quiet generosity and emphasis on learning throughout the book.

This collection of essays and stories is exactly as edgy as you’d expect for what was then an already successful author. Bourdain writes with his typical hilarity and honesty, talking about everything from his hatred of vegans, the raw food movement, and everything in between. But he also talks about his mix of travel and kitchen life and music, and how he sometimes finds himself in the middle of it all.

I’ve got a soft spot for Chang — his restaurant Momofuku was one of the first places I made a solo trip to New York back in 2007. His memoir didn’t let me down. It’s blunt about mental health, regrets, and the messiness of running restaurants, and the candor makes it a standout.

Onwuachi’s story moves from Bronx fights to culinary stardom, but it’s the detours that stick with you throughout the book. At one point, he takes money earned selling candy on the subway and uses it to launch a catering company — only to watch it implode under debt. Later, he’s cooking on a ship in the Gulf of Mexico, trapped in brutal conditions but sharpening his resolve.

I think this memoir goes a bit under the radar, and it’s a quick, enjoyable read.

Ruhlman embedded himself at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), where success is measured in exacting tasks like the infamous “soup practical,” where students are graded on a single, crystal-clear consommé.

This book drills into how technique and repetition forge skill, and how even small mistakes are magnified under an insane amount of pressure. This one is slightly less about personality and more about process, a good reminder to founders that mastery comes from systems, not taking shortcuts.

Ripert’s memoir opens with the chaos of his childhood in the south of France, where food was his total escape. One scene that stayed with me was his first day in a professional kitchen: a brutal environment where mistakes drew immediate humiliation and verbal torture, but hey, those were kitchens back then. Rather than break him, though, the pressure sharpened his quiet confidence and set him on the ultimate path to Le Bernardin.

Ripper I love for many reasons, not least of which was his quiet, beautiful friendship with the more loud and raucous Bourdain.

Achatz recounts the surreal period when he lost his sense of taste to tongue cancer while running one of the most innovative restaurants in the world (Chi-town!). The scene of him training staff to describe flavors he could no longer detect is crazy, and inspiring. Instead of stepping back, he leaned into creativity, proving that leadership isn’t about doing everything yourself but about elevating the team around you.

It’s a lesson in adaptability under impossible circumstances.

Hamilton doesn’t sugarcoat her path, literally or figuratively. Early on, she describes feeding herself as a teenager by stealing chickens and teaching herself to cook in solitude after her parents split up. Later, she talks about opening Prune with no money, scrubbing and painting the space herself before cooking for her first diners.

Talk about a raw, sometimes unsentimental, and riveting memoir, this baby captures the entrepreneurial reality of building something from scraps.

White’s kitchen was notorious for its intensity, and his book doesn’t downplay or avoid the reality of what it was. There’s one scene that shows him screaming at Gordon Ramsay - then his young protege - until Ramsay breaks down into tears and runs out of the kitchen. White has a crazy genius and like many chefs of the time, a wild ruthlessness that demands excellence at all costs.

For founders, a reminder that culture is created - whether it’s intentional or not - by the behaviors you exhibit and the ones you tolerate the most.

This was the first food memoir I ever read, and it hooked me instantly, into kitchen writing, irreverence, and my already simmering (#pun!) passion for cooking. Bourdain was such a complicated person — one of my heroes, honestly — a dude with a rare and generalized talent, literary fuel, a taste for extremes, and unfortunately, a darker side, too.

Kitchen Confidential is the book that put him on the map, peeling back the glossy façade of fine dining with unfiltered stories like “Don’t Eat Before Monday,” where he explained why seafood specials often came from days-old fish. It’s gallows humor plus brutal honesty plus painful humanity, the first of its kind, and it made him a cult figure, launched his TV career, and remains a masterclass in voice, authenticity, and storytelling.

Bourdain was the original audience trust builder, and I’ll always admire, and be thankful, to him.

There you go, ya foodies — 11 chef memoirs that aren’t just about food, but about the work, the structure, and all the goodness and grind in between.

From Pépin’s quiet mastery to Chang’s self-reckoning, to Bourdain’s brutal truths, these books showcase the real blood and sweat and tears that goes into success. It’s messy, it’s personal, and it’s honest.

So next time you feel the urge to “better yourself” with another cookie-cutter business book — whether it’s Felix Dennis chest-thumping or Charlie’s Almanac being quoted like scripture by Twitter donkeys, just skip it.

Do yourself a favor: read about kitchens instead. At least in the kitchen, the bullsh*t gets burned off.

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