Kitchen Cowboys
Memoirs of a 90s Stove Monkey
Before celebrity chefs. Before social media. Before food became a lifestyle brand. There were the Kitchen Cowboys.
Step behind the swinging kitchen doors and into the loud, hot, adrenaline-fueled world of professional cooking in the 1990s. In this raw, hilarious, and unapologetically honest memoir, R.B. Landeck takes you from a traditional European apprenticeship to the fast-paced restaurant scene of New Zealand, revealing what life was really like on the line.
Forget polished TV kitchens and carefully curated Instagram feeds. This is the untold story of an era when chefs learned by fire, worked brutal hours, survived impossible dinner services, and celebrated—or drowned their failures—long after the last customer had gone home.
Meet an unforgettable cast of larger-than-life personalities: tyrannical head chefs, gifted misfits, fearless apprentices, hard-drinking line cooks, and lifelong friends forged in the heat of the kitchen. Experience the victories, the disasters, the practical jokes, the betrayals, the camaraderie, and the madness that defined an entire generation of cooks.
"We were young and invincible, at least for a while, with chips on our shoulders the size of anvils. Each service was a war, and we felt ourselves heroes—mostly drunk, but heroes nonetheless... Our role models were Bocuse and Metallica, Escoffier and Prince. With the world on the brink of destruction, we cooked and partied like it was 1999—nothing to lose and everything to gain."
Kitchen Cowboys is more than a memoir—it's a time capsule from the last great pre-digital generation of chefs. A world where recipes came from stained cookbooks instead of search engines, skills were earned through sweat and scars, and kitchens were equal parts battlefield, family, and circus.
Perfect for:
Professional chefs and cooks
Culinary students and apprentices
Restaurant workers and hospitality professionals
Food lovers curious about life behind the kitchen doors
Readers who enjoy honest memoirs filled with humor, grit, and nostalgia
Whether you spent years working the line or have always wondered what really happened behind the pass, Kitchen Cowboys serves up an unforgettable journey through one of the wildest decades in restaurant history.
If you loved Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, this authentic, international memoir offers another unforgettable look inside the kitchens where careers—and legends—were forged.
Ebook $2.99, Paperback $12.99
