Get Out of the Kitchen

I fancy myself both something of a foodie and an aspiring chef. As such, I found a lot to relate to in Buford's sometime rambling account of his time in the kitchen of Mario Batali's NYC restaurant, Babbo, and as a bitch/apprentice in various Italian landmarks. Buford is/was an editor and writer at the New Yorker, and being somewhat of an amateur chef himself, decided to do a piece on Babbo, where he basically embedded himself in Batali's kitchen for a year, working his way up from basic daytime prep to the most intense stations in the actual restaurant kitchen itself. In between this, in the first half of the book, is a recounting of Batali's rise to food-fame-and-fortune, complete with accounts of his time (Batali's) apprenticing in a tiny Italian kitchen. Buford, once he completes his time at Babbo, decides the next logical step will be to retrace Batali's, and he himself sojourns to Italy for months at a time to apprentice and learn first pasta making and then butchery from Italians who have been plying their particular trade for generations. Along the way, he learns (obviously) a ton about both food and himself.

This book had been recommended to me by many, but most specifically by my friend Liza, who is herself planning to attend culinary school (she lent me her copy after the second in a series of supper clubs she has been throwing, where she cooks a ton of food and we eat it. This one featured homemade pasta, very apropos) and my father, who listened to it on tape. Apparently, Buford himself reads it, and my dad said that helped get through the draggy parts in the middle. Its never boring, but Buford's experiences tend to repeat themselves a bit...he goes to Italy, struggles, stops struggling, goes back to NY and applies what he learned, decides he didn't learn enough, goes back to Italy etc. The joy of the book is in hearing the accounts of Batali, who is apparently not only a truly gifted chef but such an oversize personality that most of the stories seem slightly unbelievable (not the least of which the ones where he drinks half a case of wine himself) and of the harsh but fun relaties of the restaurant worker subculture. Also fun are the Italian personalities and Bufords attempts to repeat what he has learned (at one point he buys a 225 lb. pig from a farmer's market, then has to ride it home to his Manhattan apt on his scooter, and share the elevator with a fellow tenant who tries to ignore the dead pig is his building). All in all, its a lite read, and definitely contains enough joy for the food lover to pull through.