Hot stoves, sharp knives, insanely long hours, low pay and no formal training—Psaltis pursued a relentless apprenticeship, parlaying each kitchen opportunity into another, including spending his few days off working unpaid in other restaurants, until he reached the culinary world's major leagues, working at Bouley Bakery in New York, the French Laundry in California and, most notably, for Alain Ducasse in New York and Monte Carlo, and as the original chef at Ducasse's restaurant Mix in New York. Written in the first person with assistance from his brother, Michael, Psaltis's story focuses on the professionalism and perfection required in the best restaurants. Like any great insider account, it brims with intriguing tidbits about various players and politics in the restaurant world, reveals some lesser-known practices and relays firsthand accounts of high-stakes mishaps and blunders. Details about the opulence and drive for excellence in the Ducasse restaurants, as well as Psaltis's opinionated account of practices in the "talent deficient" kitchen at the French Laundry are particularly eye-opening. Required reading for those considering culinary careers, this memoir is an appetizing indulgence for anyone who's ever wondered about the workings of a world-class kitchen.

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 his (DAZZLING!) Among the Thugs.

The updated edition of the book Julia Child called "a 'must' for aspiring chefs"-the James Beard Award-winning guide to one of today's hottest careers With more and more chefs achieving celebrity status, interest in the exciting world of today's leading chefs is higher than ever. Essential reading for anyone who loves food, Becoming a Chef gives an entertaining and informative insider's look at this dynamic profession, going behind the scenes to look into some of the most celebrated restaurant kitchens across the nation. More than 60 leading chefs-including some of the newest up-and-coming-discuss the inspiration, effort, and quirks of fate that turned would-be painters, anthropologists, and football players into culinary artists.

Chef at New York's Les Halles and author of Bone in the Throat, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business. His fast-lane personality and glee in recounting sophomoric kitchen pranks might be unbearable were it not for two things: Bourdain is as unsparingly acerbic with himself as he is with others, and he exhibits a sincere and profound love of good food. The latter was born on a family trip to France when young Bourdain tasted his first oyster, and his love has only grown since. He has attended culinary school, fallen prey to a drug habit and even established a restaurant in Tokyo, discovering along the way that the crazy, dirty, sometimes frightening world of the restaurant kitchen sustains him. Bourdain is no presentable TV version of a chef; he talks tough and dirty. His advice to aspiring chefs: "Show up at work on time six months in a row and we'll talk about red curry paste and lemon grass. Until then, I have four words for you: 'Shut the fuck up.' " He disdains vegetarians, warns against ordering food well done and cautions that restaurant brunches are a crapshoot. Gossipy chapters discuss the many restaurants where Bourdain has worked, while a single chapter on how to cook like a professional at home exhorts readers to buy a few simple gadgets, such as a metal ring for tall food. Most of the book, however, deals with Bourdain's own maturation as a chef, and the culmination, a litany describing the many scars and oddities that he has developed on his hands, is surprisingly beautiful. He'd probably hate to hear it, but Bourdain has a tender side, and when it peeks through his rough exterior and the wall of four-letter words he constructs, it elevates this book to something more than blustery memoir.

Nicolas Freeling, best known for producing some of the finest of modern crime fiction, began his working life as an apprentice cook in a large French hotel. He continued cooking professionally for many years, and his enthusiasm for, and interest in, gastronomy in its broadest sense is at least equal to his passion for crime. Here, reprinted in a single volume, are his two splendid books of gastronomical memoir drawn from those experiences. Each is a delicious blend of the culinary and the literary, and include such recipes as cinnamon lamb stew and bouillabaisse, all charmingly floating about in a consistently entertaining text. The work is illustraited by the witty and winsome pen of John Lawerence, the perfect visual sauce for Freelin's savouries. Funny, wise, full of inspiration and delight, The Kitchen Book & The Cook Book will find a place close to every cook's hearth and heart.

Journalist Michael Ruhlman talked his way into the CIA: the Culinary Institute of America, the Harvard of cooking schools. It had something to do with potatoes a grand-uncle had eaten deacades earlier, how the man could remember them so well for so long, buried as they had been in the middle of an elegant meal. Ruhlman wanted to learn how to cook potatoes like that--like an art--and the CIA seemed the place to go. The fun part of this book is that we all get to go along for the ride without having to endure the trauma of cooking school. Ever wonder what goes on in a busy kitchen, why your meal comes late or shows up poorly cooked? The temptation is to blame the waiter, but there are a world of cooks behind those swinging doors, and Ruhlman marches you right into it. It's a world where, when everything is going right, time halts and consciousness expands. And when a few things go wrong, the earth begins to wobble on its axis. Ruhlamn has the writerly skills to make the education of a chef a visceral experience.

What could possibly possess a three-star French chef, a master of his difficult trade in a country that reveres cuisine, to commit suicide in 2003, just after wrapping up the daily lunch service? Readers discover the reasons in a book so knowledgeable and breezily entertaining that it's easy to forget, while chuckling or salivating, that it's also something of an elegy to Bernard Loiseau of La Cote d'Or. Chelminski has lived in Paris for more than 30 years as a journalist, covering gastronomy, among other things, and is on schmoozing (and freeloading) terms with almost every chef in France; he first met Loiseau in 1974 when the 23-year-old chef was already winning notice. A high school dropout, Loiseau was an extroverted workaholic, clubby in the kitchen though shy with women, and a bipolar personality, obsessed with winning three stars in the venerable Michelin Red Guide. How he did it is a fascinating, discursive story. Readers learn what life was like for an apprentice (under the Troisgros brothers) in the 1960s in a kitchen that sounds near-medieval, and for a hot young chef in a chic Paris bistro in the '70s. Along the way (with droll footnotes), we're treated to a history of modern French cuisine, a look at how the Michelin family reached its gatekeeping apotheosis, encounters with dozens of chefs and many morsels of gossip. The pièce de résistance is the account of how Loiseau took a former three-star restaurant, demoted to none, back to triumphant stellar glory—and then what happened.

TV Chefs covers the whole spectrum of cooking shows---from PBS to TVFN to other cable outlets, and from the venerable (Jacques Pepin's Kitchen) to the wacky (Dinner and a Movie). It also features interviews with and/or profiles of twenty-five of today's most popular TV Chefs and food folks, including Mario Batali ("Mediterranean Mario), Julia Child (Baking with Julia Child). Graham Kerr (The Gathering Place), Martin Yan (Yan Can Cook), Micharl Lomonaco (Michael's Place), Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken (Tamales World Tour), Emeril Lagasse (Emeril Live), Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright (Two Fat Ladies), David Rosengarten (Taste), Amy Coleman (Home Cooking with Amy Coleman), Caprial Pence (Cooking with Caprial), Ming Tsai (East Meets West), Jaques Torres (Dessert Circus) and many others!

Author Barr (We Called It Macaroni) worked with culinary icon Julia Child for 24 years, starting in 1980 as an assistant to Child's monthly live segment on Good Morning America and remaining until Child's death in 2004. This delightful and sprightly backstage look at life with Child (a "Lucille Ball-with-a-rolling-pin character in the kitchen") describes Barr's work as an integral member of "the Julia team" that supported Child's "mind-boggling" schedule of demonstrations, media appearances and book signings. Barr skillfully illustrates Child's "extraordinary drive" in business, showing how "she never took her success or her audiences' acceptance of her work for granted," and how throughout her many ventures, "she maintained the integrity of what she was doing—teaching cooking." A delightful description of a day when the pair "gobbled down Double-Double burgers at the In-N-Out drive thru" illustrates how Child was "as down-to-earth, unguarded, and unselfconsciously outspoken in the company of friends as she was with the cameras rolling." By concentrating on the "memories of the Julia who was my mentor, my colleague, my friend; my story of what made her so special," Barr provides a sweet addition to Noel Riley Fitch's biography Appetite for Life and, recently, Child's autobiography with Alex Prud'Homme, My Life in France.

Food is fast becoming entertainment, so it's only natural that it should follow in the footsteps of sports and show business and offer up a collection of bloopers. Literary agent Witherspoon and food writer Friedman corralled 40 gastronomic heavyweights to share their versions of dinners gone wrong. The highlight is, unsurprisingly, the piece by chef and bestselling author Anthony Bourdain. His "New Year's Meltdown" is a case study in what happens when you don't plan (Bourdain admits, "Nobody likes a 'learning experience'—translating as it does to 'a total [a**-f******]'—but I learned"). Mario Batali's "The Last Straw," though not relating a culinary catastrophe per se, is runnerup: Batali was in culinary school when he clashed with a chef; in a spectacular crescendo, the chef hurled a pan of risotto at the young student, but revenge was sweet. But for every fantastic screwup, there's a dud. The translated pieces (such as the one by Spanish titan Ferrán Adrià) fail to captivate, and others, like Jimmy Bradley's tale about how he got drunk on the job to spite his boss, are neither entertaining nor instructive. Still, this collection happily reminds us that even big shots have off days.

Passion is the theme of this informative guide focusing on the art of food writing. "Many food writers I've met are enthusiastic, intense, and energetic in an obsessive kind of way, and love nothing more than immersing themselves in research," writes Jacob, seasoned food editor and writer. The author devotes much of the book to outlining the elements of good writing, like finding one's own unique voice or knowing the most vivid adjectives to use in reviews. Covering all the various careers available in food writing, Jacob offers tips for creating a successful cookbook, writing recipes with clarity and even writing food-related fiction novels. The end of each chapter includes helpful writing exercises, allowing readers to put her advice to practice immediately, and the book also contains plenty of practical information (e.g., how much freelancers should expect to get paid). Less useful are the brief but generally uninteresting stories about how successful food writers got their start. Still, this comprehensive guide, though at times monotonous, is a great tool for anyone looking to make a career out of a love of food.

http://www.celebritychefthegame.com/

This collection of career profiles of well-known chefs posits itself as a guide for those who fantasize about starting restaurants themselves. Chefs ask repeatedly: Have you got the stuff?. The family who founded Boston's French-Cambodian restaurant, the Elephant Walk, recounts a story of immigration and struggle. Harvard graduate Andrew Pforzheimer, who now owns three restaurants in Connecticut, trained, among other places, at a "jewel-box" restaurant (kitchen staffed by immigrants) in Beverly Hills, and Marc Jolis of Atlanta's Cafe Sunflower studied at a culinary school. None of the chefs makes the work sound easy, although Anthony Bourdain's tales of "snorting rails of coke that we'd run from one end of the bar to the other" may appeal to some. Davis includes informational sections such as a list of the 10 culinary schools with the highest enrollment and the top four reasons that restaurants fail, according to Gary Goldberg, director of the New School's Culinary Arts program. Each chef interviewed contributes one or more recipes (Marc Jolis's Sweet and Sour Lemongrass Saffronated Pasta with Apricots and Strawberries; Alan Wong's Grilled Lamb Chops with Macadamia-Coconut Crust, Cabernet Sauvignon Jus and Coconut-Ginger Cream), which are interesting but seem discordant with the body of this fairly encyclopedic vocational tool.

When "The Falls" opened in lower Manhattan in 1990 with all the pomp and press attention befitting a "hot" new trendy restaurant, no one imagined that it would close in little more than a year. The story of The Falls sadly typifies those dining-as-theater eateries where an artsy space, chic clientele, and modelesque service upstage the cuisine. Blum, a writer for Esquire , Vanity Fair , and The New Republic , offers a voyeuristic behind-the-scenes account of the intricacies of starting and running such an establishment. Filled with plentiful humor and satisfying anecdotes about the characters and events that make up the hip "downtown" New York scene, Blum's book is more an entertaining look at, rather than a serious dissertation on, the restaurant business.

n.b. The US version is irritatingly focused on sentimentality and quick-fix makeovers. Opt for the 5 seasons of the much superior UK version.

The book is divided into sections that discuss and reach out to chefs to join in that discussion of such ideas as the chef as artist, dealing with sensory perception in food, composing with flavors, putting a dish together, putting together an entire menu, and standing back to admire the growth of a personal cuisine. This is thoughtful material. It is not how-to material. These guided conversations are made practical for the home cook by charts such as which foods are in season and when, the basic flavors of foods (bananas are sweet; anchovies are salty), food matches made in heaven (lamb chops with aioli or ginger or shallots), seasoning matches made in heaven (dill and salmon), flavors of the world (Armenia means parsley and yogurt), common accompaniments to entrées (beef and potatoes), and, most fun of all, the desert-island lists of many of the chefs quoted so extensively throughout the text. Many recipes accompany the text.

High Bonnet: A Novel of Epicurean Adventures
by Idwal Jones

The high bonnet of Idwal Jones's book, published in 1945 and now reprinted by the Modern Library Food series, is the chef's toque, a symbol of his stature, of cooking itself. Achieving the high bonnet is the good fortune of the novel's Jean-Marie Gallois, a young confisseur (candy maker) from Provence who has earned an apprenticeship at Paris's famed Faisen d'Or restaurant. But Jean-Marie's ascension to glory is not the novel's central concern; revealing a world entirely devoted to food--getting it, eating it, and discussing it--is. In prose as sensually provocative as the dishes his characters enjoy, Jones acquaints readers with a world dedicated to pursuing pleasure at the table and the craft that makes it, in its culinary dimension at least, most possible. The joy and art of High Bonnet is that its readers instantly ally themselves with the characters--with their mania for dining high, low, and outrageous (on the perfect Potage Crécy and prehistoric muskox, for example). It's an exciting feat.

A witty tongue-in-cheek satire of the gourmet scene in general, more specifically the intense rivalry between the cream of the culinary creative. You know, kind of chefs who've perhaps written a book or two, but (beside Jacques Pepin) would never suffer the indignity of having their precious secrets revealed on the small screen. This is Guide Michelin meets murder. A saucy, sexy, 70s mystery that's well worth reading before you crank up the delightful film adaptation starring Jacqueline Bisset, George Segal, and the inestimable Roger Morley. This culinary comedy classic was adapted impeccably by screenwriter Peter Stone, famous for Charade. Beautiful European locations, exquisitely filmed by photograper John Alcott, and a great score by Henry Mancini.

The gifted and exuberant Ludwig Bemelmans was trained as a boy for a career as a restauranteur, and La Bonne Table is in effect his gastonomical autobiography. The high - and sometimes riotous low - points of his life with food, from Austrian cafes to the late, lamented Ritz of New York, are narrated with delight and zest as he celebrates beer and sausages, pressed duck and caviar, and the chefs who cooked for him. He remembers with decidedly mixed emotions the ways of the busboy and the waiter, and the qualities that make up the perfect maitre d'. He muses over great menus and great eaters - and soon makes the reader very hungry. Here, truly, is a feast of reading, as a lost world of luxury and elegance is brilliantly evoked and savored. Bemelmans' extraordinary charm captivated all who met him; it glows through the pages of La Bonne Table.

During his time as an inspector with the Paris Sûreté , Monsieur Pamplemousse had been "in at the death" on more than one occasion; but the phrase took on an entirely new meaning when he was present at the spectacular ending to Cuisine de Chavignol, France's premier television cooking program. Seated in the front row, he watched in silent horror as the host, having downed an oyster in close-up, uttered a strangled cry and slowly but surely disappeared from view behind a kitchen worktop. As screens across France went blank, hands reached for the telephone and the media swung into action. Eyes glued to the Pamplemousses television, Pommes Frites, dog extraordinaire, has his own views on the matter. Claude Chavignol was a bad egg if ever he d seen one, and in his experience villains seldom came out smelling of roses. Subsequent events prove him right as usual, but not before both he and his master find themselves caught up in a bizarre world of unrequited lust, murder and blackmail in high places.

Another culinary mystery series written with foodies in mind. This series debut by a Cordon Bleu chef leads readers on a cook's tour of haute cuisine, replete with tantalizing descriptions of food and its preparation, robust wit and an appropriately culinary murder. London's "Gourmet Detective," whose business is "locating rare and exotic foods, advising on substitutes for scarce products, finding alternate sources of ingredients," is hired by Francois Duquesne to find out who is sabotaging his famous restaurant by confiscating shipments of food and planting mice in the larder. The unnamed detective, who narrates the tale, is in attendance at the prestigious Circle of Careme banquet at Francois's restaurant when an influential TV journalist is poisoned. Asked to assist in the investigation by Scotland Yard's Food Squad inspector, the Gourmet Detective traces the media-steeped case to its conclusion. King serves up an entertaining puzzle as his hearty main course, rounding out the offering with food facts, references to mystery literature and exotic ingredients (among them ortolans and turbot) and snappy one-liners. The hero declares at the end that he's had enough of murder and will stick "with mangoes and marjoram from now on." Readers will hope he doesn't mean it.