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For a grandson-chef
“We ordered a copy of "Heat" to give to one of our grandsons who is working as a pasta chef during his interim year before going to university. He greatly appreciated both the cooking lessons and the "life/living" lessons.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-11-01.
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Batali, Italy, and the search for the perfect pasta...
“Buford's time in Mario Batali's kitchen was well-spent as it allowed him to give us a real look at the life in a top kitchen, from a writer's perspective. By working his way through Batlai's kitchen, Buford is able to convey the difficulty of that life and the search for perfection behind the scenes. Anyone looking to a career in this industry would do well to examine this book carefully and see if they are prepared to make the needed sacrifices. Learning from great chefs and cooks, Buford learns and shares his understanding of the process and art to making fine cuisine. Because he's a writer, his insights are better explained than they are in many of the autobiographical writings of chefs and his personal understanding of the dish definitely has an outsider's perspective.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-08-29.
The only problem I had with the book was to be found in his journeys to Italy. His defense of some of rather more acerbic characters, whether they are protecting how they make pasta or butchering a cow or pig become slightly ridiculous to me. It's as if he became a little too close to the world he was inhabiting and needed to pull back to a more objective range.
But the overall effect of this book will ake you really think more about the nature of Italian cuisine and bring forth a renewed appreciation for the food and those who prepare it.
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A little dissapointed
“I found this to be a very slow read. I love food books and the stories of people with food, but I found this to be very borring. I'm not sure why I finished it, I guess I just kept hoping it would get better and pull me in. It wasn't a bad story, just very slow.”
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-08-24. -
What if Buford's boss at the NYer had him take on a chef as intern?
“What if Batali had promised Buford's boss at the New Yorker endless free meals at Babbo if Buford would take him on as fiction editor? Batali would be saying, Oh, I love to read and I've always had a secret dream about being a writer. And then Buford would spend the next year copy editing the prose of an egotistical chef while also doing his regular job. The author makes quite a deal about the abusive culture in the kitchen, but he seems totally oblivious to the fact that he was allowed to take on a job that normally would require several years of culinary school as preparation. I imagine Batali agreed to let him intern in the kitchen because he would get publicity from it, but neither Batali or the writer seem to consider the impact on the rest of the kitchen staff. Buford borrows someone else's knives, works slowly while learning on the job, and ruins what must be thousands of dollars worth of food, all the while seeming surprised at the increasing level of nastiness around him. In spite of this, the Babbo portions of the story are very interesting. There were many things I couldn't follow: the author's various trips to Italy and where they fit into the chronology, whether he had a day job while interning and how he managed that, how/why his wife indulged his never-ending self-interest, how he butchered a pig in an apartment (where? in the bathroom? what did he do with all the leftover bits?), etc. Considering that the author was a fiction editor, I would think those details would make it into the story. I liked the book and finished it, although I skimmed several of the side indulgences like the history of polenta and the history of egg in pasta, but I think Kitchen Confidential was a much more interesting and gripping story.”
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-07-13. -
1 of 7 members found this review helpful.
A terrible, disjointed, mess
“What a mess of a book. I really wanted to like this one, and it comes with many high regards from the food world (and outside as well)... I have no idea why. It is a jumbled mess of disjointed accounts that would make far better individual newspaper or magazine shorts, which I would not be surprised if that was the original intention that somehow spawned into a book. From weak accounts of life inside Babbo which centered inexplicably on individuals with no importance rather than on the cooking/experiences to jumpy tales of the author's time in Italy which don't flow or develop into much of anything. I'm not sure how or why this book has managed such high ratings for what it is, there are much better accounts of kitchen life and even of kitchen life from an outsiders perspective. Pass on the hype, this is not worth the effort.”
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-06-22.
