Heat

“History always teaches us we can't turn back the clock, but I seem to have been surrounded by people who kept trying.”

I've said this before on other food-related books I've read and reviewed: I'm not a chef. I'm not even a cook, really, because the best my culinary skills can claim is the ability to follow a recipe. I'm an avid watcher of food shows, though, and am familiar with so many different chefs (celebrity and otherwise), ingredients, and the food industry as a whole. I picked this up because a friend of mine mentioned really enjoying it when she read it last year, and I do so love my food books.

I absolutely loved the humor and the dedication the author has for his sudden career change and desperation to make it work in a kitchen of chefs. You need to be a special sort of person to work in a kitchen and not become an alcoholic drug addict whose personality disorders are on display. After a late in life change in careers, he starts at the bottom in Batali's Babbo and provides us with a glimpse into life there. After working his way up and befriending the people around him, he then embarks on a culinary sabbatical of sorts, working his way through Italy and picking up pointers from the people that make real honest-to-god Italian food. It's a really good read, and though I see several people here saying their favorite parts surrounded Batali and Babbo, I actually had a great time reading about the author's time in Italy. Dario sounds like a trip and a half, and I giggled a lot at the mental image of the bull being brought into that small Italian village.

The elephant in the room here is the author's description of Mario Batali. He's a deeply unlikeable guy by all accounts here, and the handwavy thing to do is chalk it up to “that's just the restaurant industry”. He comes off as being offensive, being a drunk, a lush, and extremely misogynistic. Despite the scenes this comes up in, I still walked away from this book really enjoying what I read.

I really recommend this to people who enjoy food, who enjoy restaurant stories, who enjoy Italian food, and who enjoy a lot of humor in their books.

Bill Buford loves to cook. He has a crazy idea: Why not offer to work for free in a restaurant kitchen and learn how professionals cook. Buford puts his plan into action and before he knows it, he is working in the kitchen of one of New York's best restaurants. Okay, he's chopping carrots, but he's surrounded by magnificent cooks, and, gradually, he moves up in the kitchen hierarchy. Buford is a wonderful writer and the kitchens where he works provides zany characters and situations that make for a great read.