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Rated by buyers
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I love this book. If I could get my wife to read it, she would have lasted 10 pages. If you don't love to cook, love to experiment in the kitchen or love to eat at and critque fine restaurants, you might not understand this book. I finished this book wishing I could trade places with Buford. If you're a guy who would rather go to Lowe's instead of a kitchen supply store, this is probably not for you.
Rated by buyers
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I've been a fairly faithful watcher of Top Chef, and a recent one of other restaurant/food based reality tv shows. I wondered if the kitchens were really as sexist as they were made out to be. I wondered how it was so "easy" to get meals brought out in 20 - 30 minutes. Those questions and more get answered. For example, I decided to make braised short ribs based on a Top Chef recipe and one of them ended up looking all weird and alien-like. I wasn't sure why it happened since the others were fine. This book explains it.
Bill Buford relays his misadventures with humor, very often at his own expense. I haven't read any of his other works so I'm not sure if it's his style of writing or if was lucky to be aware of how he looked as an enthusiastic cook with little knowledge to the professional kitchen staff. Some of his curiosities was not of much interest to me (like when the egg made it into the pasta) but others are well worth the reading (like when he takes a pig home to butcher it).
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Very good biography! One has to be interested in cooking and food. AT parts more detail than I want to know, but the book is fascinating, educational and humourous. Highly recomend it.
Rated by buyers
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Anyone who has ever worked at a continental-style restaurant should read this book.
I picked up "Heat" in the interests of reliving my experiences in two continental restaurants, run by two totally different-in-temperament chefs, one Austrian, one Swiss. Neither one embodies quite the insanity exhibited by Mario Batali, the owner/operator of Babbo in New York City,and known via TV as The Iron Chef. I must confess I have never watched The Iron Chef, although I have heard of him; but most of what goes on here does not impact him in that show.
Mr Buford, who seems to have had an open-ended commitment with his real job at the New York Times, decides upon interviewing and further visiting with Mario Batali, that he would like to apprentice to him, to learn the art of Italian cooking. Mr Buford knows just enough about cooking to get into trouble, and it doesn't take long for him to do so when he arrives at Babbo to begin his apprenticeship. I found myself nodding my head at the things that happened to him; I recognized all the personalities in the restaurant, all the petty jealousies, all the various traumas that go on in a busy, popular restaurant on a weekend night. Mr Buford's traverse through the stages of hierarchy was entertaining to say the least. Some things that went on there made me cringe; I'm pretty sure some of the things Mr Buford reported have never occurred at the restaurants I worked at, but it's possible; I was never on the line, but my chefs were nowhere near Mario Batali in style or performance either. (And I mean that in a good way; the man is clearly nuts.)
My favourite part of the book, however, was when Mr Buford, in the interests of furthering his education as a butcher, went to Italy to study under Dario Cecchini in Tuscany (further indication that Mr Buford has ample funds stored up to entertain these conceits about becoming a chef, as it seems apparent that he wasn't earning anything in Italy either). His style of writing made the little hill town where he was very vivid in my mind; the personalities he encountered were highly likable; and overall I wanted to pack up and go over there for a protracted visit myself. It didn't make me any more enamoured of pigs or their products (I only had to find out what pancetta was to know I didn't need it in my diet), but I was greatly entertained by his excursion over there and, having long wanted to visit Tuscany, it just makes me want to go there even more.
Mr Buford is a thorough examiner of his environment, and I felt like I knew everyone he worked with afterwards. The joy of food, the joy of the preparation of food (or not), is clear throughout the book, and while I found hilarity within it, I also found great insight in the entire restaurant experience, from cooking to management. I'm not sure I could work with Mr Batali, but I have a greater insight into the world of food preparation for the public, on all levels. A very entertaining book. I felt like I had a pretty good education in the topic at the end of it.
Rated by buyers
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In reading through the 1 star reviews, I'm awfully confused. There's not much "foul" language, particularly if you contrast it with Bourdain's books. I'm 7/8 of the way through and can't think of anything other than a very few sprinkled f-bombs at all. For the folks who complain about the lack of an in-depth look at French food and life in France - well, its title is pretty much the major clue - pasta and Tuscany don't scream French cuisine. I'm constantly amazed at people's ability to complain. That said, I enjoyed it but it's not a great book. It offers one person's experiences in a celebrity driven kitchen (I've never watched Mario Batali on TV and I am less likely to now) and in some other settings. I never caught his passion for cooking - it seemed more like an adventure so he would have something to write about than an adventure of his life.
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Anthony Bourdain is host of the Discovery Channel's No Reservations, executive chef at Les Halles in Manhattan, and author of the bestselling and groundbreaking Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, A Cook's Tour, Bone in the Throat, and many others. His latest book, The Nasty Bits will be released on May 16, 2006.