Bradley Cooper Played An Anthony Bourdain-Inspired Chef In This Forgotten Fox Sitcom

Years before "The Bear" became the biggest thing since sliced bread, Bradley Cooper and a team of A-list creatives tried to make a TV cooking drama a hit ... and unfortunately, it failed so badly that hardly anybody even remembers "Kitchen Confidential" nowadays.

Based on the memoir of the same name by Anthony Bourdain, "Kitchen Confidential," which aired on Fox for a single 13-episode season, starred Cooper as Jack Bourdain, a chef who's trying to overcome addictions to drug and alcohol and run a New York hotspot called Nolita. Cooper, then fresh off a run on ABC's "Alias" as the faithful sidekick Will Tippin, had the charm and charisma to lead this series, which also starred John Francis Daley, Jaime King, and Bonnie Somerville. Unfortunately, the show was canceled very quickly — as in, after the fourth episode aired — due to ratings. In a 2023 feature on the series in The Ringer, some of its creatives, including producer Darren Star and creator David Hemingson, reflected on what exactly happened.

"I feel like a restaurant is a wonderful original setting for a show, and we have the book and that title. 'Kitchen Confidential' is such a great title," Star remarked. "We wanted to fictionalize the character of Anthony Bourdain, so it really wasn't anything to do with him, and have a creative license to tell this story based on his experiences."

As for Hemingson, he still thinks about it. "It's the one that got away," he admitted. "I try not to dwell on it too much. But I will say there were a couple of years afterward where I was shell-shocked because I didn't know how to do it better." Unfortunately, "Kitchen Confidential" couldn't stand the heat and got out of the kitchen — though Cooper decided to try playing a chef again.

"Kitchen Confidential" aired in 2005 before getting canceled, and in 2015, Bradley Cooper attempted the chef thing again in "Burnt." The story follows a pretty similar trajectory. In this one, Cooper plays chef Adam Jones, who gets ejected from his job at a renowned Parisian restaurant after behavior related to his addiction causes major problems. After a self-imposed hiatus, Adam ends up working at a high-end London hotel in its kitchen and reintroducing himself to the culinary world. "Burnt" co-stars Sienna Miller, Daniel Brühl, Omar Sy, Alicia Vikander, Uma Thurman, and Dame Emma Thompson, but despite its pedigree, it didn't fare well commercially and received middling reviews from critics.

What's funny, though, is that Cooper actually brought up "Kitchen Confidential" while he was doing press for "Burnt" with Yahoo, explaining that it helped him learn the skills he needed for the movie. "The thing that really paid off was the fact that I'd been doing research since I was a kid, working in restaurants," Cooper noted, speaking to his real-life experience when he was younger. He continued:

"I was a busboy at a Greek restaurant and a prep cook at an [Italian] restaurant called Mirabella's in Somers Point, New Jersey. I'd be there from 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., just cooking. And having shot a TV show [Fox's 'Kitchen Confidential,' which aired in 2005] where I prepped then, too. For that, I got to cook at Le Halles [in New York], which is the restaurant Anthony Bourdain cooked at."

This was, probably for the better, the end of Cooper playing chefs (though a picture of him as a chef does make an appearance in "The Bear"). Now, he's an A-list movie star ... and director.

In case you haven't been keeping track of Bradley Cooper in recent years, the guy's been on a pretty big winning streak for a while now. (And I'm not just saying that because he and I are both from Philadelphia, but while we're here, "Go Birds.") Before "Burnt," Cooper made a name for himself in comedies like "Wedding Crashers" and the "Hangover" film trilogy, but he also made it quite clear that he's a formidable dramatic performer in projects like "Silver Linings Playbook," which earned him an Academy Award nomination and snagged his co-star Jennifer Lawrence an Oscar. Those two worked together again in "American Hustle" with the same director, the controversy-ridden David O. Russell, and in 2014 (again, before "Burnt"), Cooper achieved two new milestones: He joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Rocket Raccoon in "Guardians of the Galaxy" and earned another Oscar nod thanks to the controversial biopic "American Sniper."

By the time 2018 rolled around, Cooper was trying new things — and succeeding. That year, he released his remake of "A Star is Born," which he directed and starred in as singer-songwriter Jackson Maine alongside Lady Gaga as Ally, the rising star he ends up in a relationship with. Since then, Cooper has directed and appeared in two other acclaimed projects — the Leonard Bernstein biopic "Maestro" and the stand-up comedy drama "Is This Thing On?" — and he's an established member of Hollywood's A-list. People may have forgotten about "Kitchen Confidential," but nobody will forget its star.