Kitchen Con: Writing on the Restaurant Racket

Are all food critics corrupt? What's the trick for getting a table tonight in America's and Europe's most fashionable restaurants? How can we feast while half the world starves? Find out in Kitchen Con.

"Waiter and customer have a lot in common. Each lingers under the delusion that lunch is on the way, neither has more than a passing interest in the other, and both are at the mercy of an ill-tempered thug with a white toque," writes Trevor White in this hilarious account of life as a restaurant critic. Kitchen Con is his passionate, intelligent expose of the restaurant business, from the world's first restaurant after the French Revolution to today's most fashionable tables in London, Paris, and New York. With style and humor, White lifts the lid off the culinary cartel-owners, chefs, and critics-that cons diners around the globe. A scathing attack on gourmet dogma, his defiantly populist critique of restaurant culture redefines the dining room as a place in which people should be satisfied rather than frozen and awe-struck. No one-not even the author

himself-is spared in this riveting account of life at the heart of the restaurant racket.

Lauded in the U.K. as the next Kitchen Confidential (if the punny title isn't enough, "Including a conversation with Anthony Bourdain" is printed helpfully on the cover), White's occasionally thrilling and frequently rambling take on restaurant criticism-and the state of food in general-is sure to raise hackles, much as his inspiration did when it was first published in 2000. White persuasively argues that restaurant criticism has no discernable purpose other than to sell the newspapers and magazines in which they appear, that wait staff should be paid a fair wage in lieu of tips and that a steady decline in true service is hobbling an industry allegedly devoted to it. His oft-repeated remark that most European critics (and patrons) "know the taste of everything, and how to cook nothing" supports his thesis that the West has bred a world of consumers constantly hunting down the Next Big Thing, rather than appreciating (or even understanding) what's in front of them. White thoughtfully includes original drafts of his reviews alongside their heavily revised published versions, lending credence to his entertaining take-down of sacred cows like the Michelin and Zagat guides. Though incendiary passages abound-White isn't one to mince words-this volume lacks focus, making it more like a loosely-assembled essay collection than a provocative assault on the status quo.
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