Review: Heat
Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
- Bill Buford
As I've said before, I like books about cooking and food more than I do cooking, and almost as much as I like eating. This book was in many ways satisfying and appetizing, but also had its flaws. I loved the first hundred pages, got bored through the second hundred, and then enjoyed the last hundred. Buford's strength is in recounting events at which he was present. I laughed out loud many times, especially during his last stint in Italy working for a temperamental and brilliant butcher. The scene where they go out to dinner and the owner of the restaurant ends up beating the butcher over the head with a menu, makes me crack up just thinking of it. And a really admirable job is done of making Mario Batali seem like more than a caricature, but still larger than life.