The Reach of a Chef: Beyond the Kitchen - Hardcover

Ruhlman, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067003763X ISBN 13: 9780670037636

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2006

Synopsis

The James Beard Award-finalist author of The Soul of a Chef traces the allure of celebrity chefs in America, touring some of the nation's most prestigious and innovative restaurants to explore the latest trends, in an account that profiles such locales as The French Laundry, Le Bernardin, and Las Vegas's most recent additions to the Strip. 35,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Ruhlman is the author of The Making of a Chef, The Soul of a Chef, and Charcuterie. He has also collaborated with Thomas Keller on two cookbooks, The French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon. Additionally, Ruhlman has written for The New York Times, Gourmet, Saveur, and Food Arts magazine, as well as being featured on the PBS series Cooking Under Fire.

Reviews

There's no rest for the restaurateur in Ruhlman's engaging account of a culinary world that's become even more frenetic in the wake of the Food Network's success and the rise of celebrity chefs desperately clinging to their stars. Ruhlman (The Making of a Chef; The Soul of a Chef) revisits some of the people he's worked with in the past and the school where he trained to see how things have changed since "chef branding, with its product lines, multiple name–recognized restaurants, and entertainment venues, has lured the chef out of the kitchen." Ruhlman points out the irony of such chefs as Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Lagasse and Anthony Bourdain becoming so successful that they no longer have time to practice the thing that brought them success in the first place. He solicits opinions on the phenomenon from an array of people in the business and also profiles some of those still shaping American cooking in the kitchen, from Melissa Kelly and her down-to-earth comfort food to Grant Achatz and his avant-garde, technical creations. Ruhlman has a light, unobtrusive style, and he brings considerable knowledge to the table when commenting on either individual dishes or the industry as a whole. (On sale May 22)
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Ruhlman continues his meticulous examination of the role of the restaurant chef commenced in his earlier books. As Ruhlman perceives it, the one great advantage to the celebrity chef's media ubiquity is access to a bully pulpit, a forum to help save Americans from total confusion over conflicting information on nutrition and obesity. He revisits the Culinary Institute of America and discerns how the passage of time and its success have changed its curriculum. Ruhlman profiles several chefs, among them Chicago's lionized Grant Achatz, trying to discern what makes his food truly inventive and a meal at his pricey restaurant an experience beyond the ordinary. He takes on the Emeril Lagasse phenomenon, rising to Lagasse's defense while others are apparently bent on dismissing television's most recognizable chef. Visiting Las Vegas, Ruhlman christens it "America's food Gomorrah." Fans of Ruhlman's previous volumes will relish all the insider "dish" here and will have a pleasant experience despite Ruhlman's rambling, confusing, and exhausting parentheses-within-parentheses sentences. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067003763X
• ISBN 13: 9780670037636
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352