Product Description

A highly acclaimed writer and editor, Bill Buford left his job at The New Yorker for a most unlikely destination: the kitchen at Babbo, the revolutionary Italian restaurant created and ruled by superstar chef Mario Batali.

Finally realizing a long-held desire to learn first-hand the experience of restaurant cooking, Buford soon finds himself drowning in improperly cubed carrots and scalding pasta water on his quest to learn the tricks of the trade. His love of Italian food then propels him on journeys further afield: to Italy, to discover the secrets of pasta-making and, finally, how to properly slaughter a pig. Throughout, Buford stunningly details the complex aspects of Italian cooking and its long history, creating an engrossing and visceral narrative stuffed with insight and humor.

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2301 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-26
• Released on: 2007-06-26
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.com
Bill Buford's funny and engaging book Heat offers readers a rare glimpse behind the scenes in Mario Batali's kitchen. Who better to review the book for Amazon.com, than Anthony Bourdain, the man who first introduced readers to the wide array of lusty and colorful characters in the restaurant business? We asked Anthony Bourdain to read Heat and give us his take. We loved it. So did he. Check out his review below. --Daphne Durham

---

Guest Reviewer: Anthony Bourdain

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.

Heat is a remarkable work on a number of fronts--and for a number of reasons. First, watching the author, an untrained, inexperienced and middle-aged desk jockey slowly transform into not just a useful line cook--but an extraordinarily knowledgable one is pure pleasure. That he chooses to do so primarily in the notoriously difficult, cramped kitchens of New York's three star Babbo provides further sado-masochistic fun. Buford not only accurately and hilariously describes the painfully acquired techniques of the professional cook (and his own humiations), but chronicles as well the mental changes--the "kitchen awareness" and peculiar world view necessary to the kitchen dweller. By end of book, he's even talking like a line cook.

Secondly, the book is a long overdue portrait of the real Mario Batali and of the real Marco Pierre White--two complicated and brilliant chefs whose coverage in the press--while appropriately fawning--has never described them in their fully debauched, delightful glory. Buford has--for the first time--managed to explain White's peculiar--almost freakish brilliance--while humanizing a man known for terrorizing cooks, customers (and Batali). As for Mario--he is finally revealed for the Falstaffian, larger than life, mercurial, frighteningly intelligent chef/enterpreneur he really is. No small accomplishment. Other cooks, chefs, butchers, artisans and restaurant lifers are described with similar insight.

Thirdly, Heat reveals a dead-on understanding--rare among non-chef writers--of the pleasures of "making" food; the real human cost, the real requirements and the real adrenelin-rush-inducing pleasures of cranking out hundreds of high quality meals. One is left with a truly unique appreciation of not only what is truly good about food--but as importantly, who cooks--and why. I can't think of another book which takes such an unsparing, uncompromising and ultimately thrilling look at the quest for culinary excellence. Heat brims with fascinating observations on cooking, incredible characters, useful discourse and argument-ending arcania. I read my copy and immediately started reading it again. It's going right in between Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and Zola's The Belly of Paris on my bookshelf. --Anthony Bourdain

---

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Buford's book starts smartly—he first met dynamic celebrity chef Mario Batali at a dinner party at his own home, where Batali sparkled until 3 a.m.—and continues at a fast clip as he conceives the notion of becoming Batali's "kitchen slave." Buford wanted to profile Batali for the New Yorker but also wanted to learn about cooking; he would be a "journalist-tourist" in the boot camp of a "kitchen genius." His subject became an obsession, and over the next three years, he investigated a rich menu of subjects: what makes a three-star restaurant work; what it takes to be a TV food star; the techniques and history of Italian cooking, not just from library research but also from repeated trips to Italy to visit Batali's relatives. Terrific culinary writing tracks Buford's successive passions for short ribs, polenta, tortellini and then the butcher's art, Italian-style, of pig and cow. Along the way, to his own surprise, Buford found that he had become a kitchen insider. This is a wonderfully detailed and highly amusing book from the writer who once took an insider's look at English soccer hooligans in Among the Thugs. 100,000 first printing. (June 13)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Could loving to cook translate into being a professional under the tutelage of the famous chef of a three-star New York restaurant? Buford jumped at the chance to find out. This energetic account of his intense culinary education brings readers into the scalding kitchens where fine food is prepared by obsessive chefs for whom timing is critical and cooking is art. The author entwines the history of pasta with his preparation of it, and he visits the theory that it was the Italians who brought fine cooking to France rather than the other way around. Buford follows the example of his mentors as he travels to Italian villages to serve as kitchen slave to a master of pasta-making and as an apprentice to a butcher to learn to perfect that culinary craft. A journalist for the New Yorker, the author writes with the same gusto with which he cooks. Readers learn how physically demanding professional cooking is, how hard it is on the ego, and how satisfying it can be. This is the ultimate career book for would-be chefs, and a book that noncooks will savor until the last word.–Ellen Bell, Amador Valley High School, Pleasanton, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

---

Customer Reviews

Apprentice of apprentices
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.

Diversionary but not fascinating
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.

A peek into the kitchen
This is a very fun book. It is especially fun for those of us who have worked in restaurants. The literary images of poor Mr. Buford being thrown to the fire--quite literally--is a delightful ride. It is a foodie's paradise and a self-deprecating memoir of the author's offbeat culinary education (at a somewhat mature age).