Bill Buford
Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany (2006)
Author: Bill Buford
Genre: Food/Memoir (Inside Encounters)
Book Summary:
Bill Buford is an amateur at-home cook who aspires to learn what it means to be a chef. After becoming an acquaintence of world-famous chef, Mario Batali, Buford realizes that the best way to learn what it means to be a chef is to actually work in a kitchen. Buford begins his quest for understanding as a "slave" in Batali's three-star New York restaurant, Babbo. Over the course of a year, Buford works his way up from being a prep slave, to a line trainee, to a fully-fledged line cook. As he recounts his experiences in the restaurant, he introduces readers to many of the colorful characters that populate Babbo's kitchen and devotes significant space to explaining the history and techniques behind many of the restaurant's most famous dishes. After working at Babbo for almost a year, Buford decides that he must travel to Italy and train with some of the artisans who trained Batali to truly understand the food he has been preparing at the restaurant. He apprentices himself to Betta, the woman who trained Batali to make pasta, and later apprentices himself to Dario Cecchini, the most famous butcher in all of Italy. Over the course of the book, Buford outlines his transformation from untrained kitchen rube to fully capable Italian cook, provides readers with detailed histories of Italian cooking and pasta, and does a good job of describing a cast of memorable characters. SPOILER: By the end of the novel, Buford has become a rather accomplished cook, to the point that Batali suggests that they open a restaurant together. Buford declines.
Geographical Setting: New York City & Various Italian Small Towns
Time Period: 2002-2004
Appeal Characteristics:
Buford is a good writer. He manages to write both good dialogue and easy to read explanations of culinary techniques and histories. The book strikes a good balance between conversations, descriptions of action and events, and histories. He also does a great job of describing the people he worked with at Babbo and met in Italy. While the characters are all real and not created by Buford, his descriptions of their idiosyncries and personalities should be considered good characterization. Buford also does a good job of describing Babbo's kitchen and the small towns he visits in Italy. The settings are not necessarily important to the book, but his descriptions of them certainly add to the narrative. The book moves at a measured pace. Buford isn't in a hurry to tell his story, but it moves along without ever getting bogged down. The tone of the book is fairly light, conversational, and often humorous. Buford treats the subject matter seriously, but this is not a serious book.
Read-alikes: The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pepin would be a good suggestion for readers who enjoyed Heat because it deals with similar themes, is light and conversational in tone, and is considered to be well-written by many critics. In The Apprentice Pepin tells the story of his life and how his experiences shaped him into a chef. This book is more serious than some of the others recommended, but would still be an entertaining read for aspiring chefs. The Seventh Daughter: My Culinary Journey From Beijing to San Francisco, by Cecilia Chang, is another depiction of the journey from child to chef. This time, readers can expect to follow along as Chang describes her upbringing in China and the events that brought her to America. After settling in San Francisco, the story follows Chang's founding of Mandarin, a famous restaurant and her attempts to popularize true Chinese food. Readers who enjoyed the theme, pace, and descriptive style of Heat will find a lot to like in this book. Two books by Michael Ruhlman would be especially appealing to fans of Heat. The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) tells the story of how Ruhlman, a journalist, enrolls in the school to learn what it takes to be a chef. If the plot sounds sort of familiar to Heat, there's no mistake. The two books are written in a similar style, cover similar topics (a novice's journey to becoming a chef), and are both conversational in tone. Rhulman's second book, The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection is the follow-up to his first, and focuses on the CIA's Certified Master Chef exam and a number of famous chefs around the country. This book would be a good suggestion for fans who enjoyed learning about famous chefs while reading Heat and also enjoyed its characterizations and writing style. A must read for all aspiring cooks and chefs is Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. This book chronicles Bourdain's journey from cook to chef and introduces readers to a wild cast of characters, their antics, and a glimpse of what really goes on in kitchens. Readers who enjoyed Heat's characterizations, writing style, and subject matter will find all of those things and more in Bourdain's book.
Red Flags: Some Foul Language
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