Bill Buford

The author takes a position at Maria Batali's Babbo, and presents a view of cooking, first as a prep chef, then up through a variety of positions in the kitchen. Along the way he presents a detailed profile of Batali, and how Batali traveled to Italy to learn the trade, as did Buford. The book must read very differently in the MeToo era than it did a few years earlier. It seems common that head chefs in restaurants are tyrants, or at least close to it, and others, are shown belittling and shaming many of their employees. Batali rules the kitchen, and is a man of big appetites (as Jim Harrison showed in A Very Big Lunch). You have to wonder what will change now that Batali and many others have been accused of sexual harassment in the kitchen. Buford is good at showing character and describing what it's like to cook in a busy, high-end restaurant (no fun), and his food writing, especially about pasta, is very readable.… (more)

This book ticked many of my boxes: Food-wine, France, memoir. But I didn't like it very much. There were some good bits, but not many. Memoirs do not have to reek of ego, but this one did -- at least for me. And I just didn't get the problem with his two boys not becoming bilingual and their having to return to the US to save English. Did they never speak to their children? Was the whole family so engrossed in becoming French that they couldn't speak English at home? Their situation was ideal for raising bilingual children. This seemed like an excuse for their return to the U.S. But it's not really important and not the point of the book, just one more thing that annoyed me.… (more)