Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton

Jan 07, 2012 Cassy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Foodies

Recommended to Cassy by: Limited library selection

Shelves: physical-borrowed, 2011, non-fiction-biography, region-america-canada, region-europe, audio

Whenever I read an autobiography, I find myself asking these two basic questions:

1. Can they write?

2. Is their life interesting enough to warrant a book? Because, I'll be honest, mine is not.

To the first question, Hamilton can write. She earned an MFA (for whatever you think that’s worth). I enjoyed both the crispiness of the details, as well their selection and amount. She was also good at analyzing herself, her life’s trajectory, and the food industry.

Regarding the second question, I had mixed...more Whenever I read an autobiography, I find myself asking these two basic questions:

1. Can they write?

2. Is their life interesting enough to warrant a book? Because, I'll be honest, mine is not.

To the first question, Hamilton can write. She earned an MFA (for whatever you think that’s worth). I enjoyed both the crispiness of the details, as well their selection and amount. She was also good at analyzing herself, her life’s trajectory, and the food industry.

Regarding the second question, I had mixed feelings. The primary focus of the book is her varied culinary career. She begins in the kitchen of her French mother and with her jobs waitressing, moves on to the drudgery of catering companies, describes the creation of her own restaurant and its inspirations, and ends cooking with/for in-laws at their Italian villa. The former sections were okay for me. It was the last two stages that I found most interesting – likely because my husband and I enjoy going to chic restaurants and pretending to be gourmands. As the waiter explains in painstaking detail that the duck is prepared in the [insert French method] way and the mushrooms are from [insert exotic locale], we nod and nod as though we understand. It was beneficial to have the perspective of an actual connoisseur. (And Leo, the gig is up.)

There was also a good deal about her personal life during which my interest fluctuated more dramatically. I was a straight-laced kid so the tales of her rebellious youth could be titillating. But I did feel that the childhood section was drawn out. Thereafter, I thought she held back. She had a large family growing up, yet only spoke of a few members as an adult. What happened? She has (or had?) an unconventional relationship with her husband. She offhandedly mentioned that they didn’t move in together after their courthouse wedding and were still living apart when she gave birth to their first child. I wanted more of that!

I agree it was right for the food to be the focus. And I can imagine her publisher enforcing this emphatically. Yet I would have appreciated, at least, better allocation of the personal word count: less childhood and more explanation of monumental adult relationships.

Ultimately, the best way to gauge one’s reaction to this book is probably to ask a third question.

3. Do you want to eat at Hamilton’s restaurant, Prune?

The next time I am in New York, yeah, I’d like to go. Although given the success of her book, it might be a royal pain to get a dinner reservation.
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Jul 21, 2011 Noah rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really, really wanted to like this memoir more than I ultimately did. Indeed, the first third of it was excellent. The second section started the slow decline, and by the end of the book I almost kind of hated Hamilton as a person.

Though I can certainly appreciate her take on things (and I enjoy her writing style and voice), the more she talked about her own family and her marriage, the more she lost me. I'm not sure if the intent was to generate sympathy for her position in her marriage, but...more

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Jul 04, 2011 S. Annelise Adams rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Despite the accolades from arrogant *sswipe Anthony Bourdain, I read this anyway. Rather, I gobbled it up in two days. The author is aware that her frigid French ballerina mother is fully responsible for her (prepare yourselves 'cause I'm gunna say it) Freudian obssession with fresh and authentic cooking and she illustrates this without making us wallow with her in endless therapy sessions. I loved revisiting NY's East Village circa 1988--rat carcasses and all-- with her as a tour guide almost a...more

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May 28, 2011 Nina rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I think it went something like this:
Agent to Gabrielle: "Hey, you've had a famous restaurant for a while now and you've never been on the Food Network, Iron Chef, etc., why not hop on the bandwagon and write a memoir?"
G. to Agent: "Gee, I've been keeping journals all my life, why not, sure, I'm gonna do it".
This book pissed me off almost as much as "Eat, Pray, Love". Self-referential (a word she uses a lot), snobby, totally devoid of any spark of humor. This woman doesn't like paragraphs. She ju...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Kathryn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Gabrielle Hamilton certainly has led an enviable life. Blood, Bones & Butter is an adventure, and, truthfully, I was disappointed when it ended. But I found that, while Hamilton is skilled at invoking the senses, she is less adept at reconciling various parts of her story.The resulting gaps within the narrative make it a disjointed and frustrating read and impair what is otherwise a very good book.

Feeling “disaffected” after 20 years in the kitchen, she leaves to pursue an MFA degree. After

...more Gabrielle Hamilton certainly has led an enviable life. Blood, Bones & Butter is an adventure, and, truthfully, I was disappointed when it ended. But I found that, while Hamilton is skilled at invoking the senses, she is less adept at reconciling various parts of her story.The resulting gaps within the narrative make it a disjointed and frustrating read and impair what is otherwise a very good book.

Feeling “disaffected” after 20 years in the kitchen, she leaves to pursue an MFA degree. After returning to Manhattan, she opens Prune without any prior experience as a restaurant chef or manager. Up to that point, we hear only about a mishmash of catering jobs and a couple of summers as a children’s camp cook. Considering that unorthodox employment record (and her ambiguous feelings toward the industry), the decision to take on her own restaurant is puzzling. Filling in her storytelling would enable readers to make sense of it. Somewhere in there, she could have talked more about her transformation from hustling cocktail waitress to accomplished professional chef. Who (besides her mother) or what has influenced her and how did she master her craft? What does she feel is most rewarding about a culinary career, and why, specifically, does she become disenchanted with hers? How does she feel she can succeed in the competitive New York restaurant scene?

Similar omissions appear in the telling of her personal life. Although I can understand her anger and sense of abandonment at her family’s breakup, I cannot comprehend why those feelings are directed entirely at her mother. I sense that she doesn’t either because she never addresses it. Hamilton seems unwilling or unable to self-analyze. Equally as confusing is her sudden change from gay to heterosexual woman. No explanation given. She is either as baffled by it herself or simply disinclined to connect the dots for her readers.

Overall, it is an enjoyable book but somehow unsatisfying. The holes are too large. Yes, Hamilton can choose how much to reveal in her memoir. Like another poster suggested, however, she could better support those parts she does reveal.

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Apr 02, 2013 V. Briceland rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Toward the end of Hamilton's interminable chef memoir, she admits to having a certain sense of Gallic superiority to the rest of the world. Hoo boy, is that an understatement. While Hamilton's recollections of her unconventional childhood and rise to celebrity as the owner of Prune offer up a credible pastiche of MFA-style literary writing, the author's personality is so off-putting that I found the book nearly unreadable.

When Hamilton is talking about cooking, or about the restaurant industry a...more Toward the end of Hamilton's interminable chef memoir, she admits to having a certain sense of Gallic superiority to the rest of the world. Hoo boy, is that an understatement. While Hamilton's recollections of her unconventional childhood and rise to celebrity as the owner of Prune offer up a credible pastiche of MFA-style literary writing, the author's personality is so off-putting that I found the book nearly unreadable.

When Hamilton is talking about cooking, or about the restaurant industry and its quirks, she's very nearly engaging--that is, if one can overlook her arty tendency to switch between first-person-past and second-person-present-tense narrative on the turn of a very thinly-sliced wafer of pancetta.

Hamilton's narrative style rests on the piling-on of rich layers of detail, however, yet throughout long passages of the book I found myself distrusting the accuracy of those details. I raised an eyebrow, for example, when she described driving down from Ann Arbor, Michigan, across 8 Mile Road into downtown Detroit--a nice shout-out to one of Detroit's more infamous landmarks, but a geographically-dubious route into the city. And it's outright disingenuous of her to spout foodie nonsense about how her childhood once-a-week dessert was a single square of really good imported chocolate or a lightly-sweetened slice of buttered bread, when she's mentioned, only a few pages before, gorging on Tastykakes. If one can't trust the details, what, exactly, can one relate to in a memoir like this?

Certainly not the thorn-skinned author, herself. A similar tone of superiority mars a good deal of the narrative. Hamilton dislikes children and their preference for French fries and macaroni and cheese over that single square of really good chocolate, or any of the more exotic fares she serves in Prune; she's dismissive of their parents and indeed, of anyone who will eat less-than-gourmet fare instead of skipping a meal altogether. She spends a large portion of the book secretly mocking and sniggering at her graduate school comrades only to turn around and justify the behavior by accusing them of condescending to her. And the meandering last third of her book turns on the cold fury she experiences, and the subsequent two-week silent treatment she gives to her (long-suffering) husband when he mentions that he'd like to buy a new iPhone.

There really is some minutiae that probably should be left out of a memoir, apparently. (less)

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Jan 24, 2012 Jeanette rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Jeanette by: Buddy Read with Judy

Shelves: books-about-food, biography-memoir

This is not a chef's tale in the fashion we've come to expect from foodie books in recent years. It's more of an autobiography that happens to include a lot of cooking and eating. Put even more precisely, it's an exercise in self-analysis through writing, in which the reader is allowed to tag along.

The book's subtitle is a perfect seven-word description of Gabrielle "Prune" Hamilton's road to chefdom. Her training in the food service industry was as inadvertent as any career path could possibly...more This is not a chef's tale in the fashion we've come to expect from foodie books in recent years. It's more of an autobiography that happens to include a lot of cooking and eating. Put even more precisely, it's an exercise in self-analysis through writing, in which the reader is allowed to tag along.

The book's subtitle is a perfect seven-word description of Gabrielle "Prune" Hamilton's road to chefdom. Her training in the food service industry was as inadvertent as any career path could possibly be. She never had a plan. The simple need to survive took her from teenage criminal with a strong work ethic to minor celebrity with a thriving New York City restaurant.

The dissolution of her family led Gabby to take her first job in the food industry at the age of 13. For the next 20 years, she washed dishes, waited tables, freelanced in the catering world, and even served as a cook for a children's summer camp. She was at loose ends in her life when she was offered a chance at a tiny abandoned restaurant space, and all of her years of experience came together in the successful creation of Prune.

Hamilton knows how to spin a narrative, particularly when she has a juicy anecdote that lends itself to embellishment and hyperbole. And yet, for all her ability to tell a story, there's an obfuscatory quality to her writing that smacks of coyness, whether intentional or not. She throws out a lot of references she doesn't explain, and jumps around in the chronology much as one might do in a private journal of self-discovery rather than a book meant for public consumption.

In the last 100 or so pages, the book slowly devolves into a near-microscopic examination of her marriage to Michele, an "Italian Italian." This was where the book fell apart for me. She seemed to have abandoned her original intentions for the book, and she ends it without resolution or indication of where her life now stands.

Those who have read the book will forgive me for saying I was left feeling like her entire life was just one big "bone"-doggle. Her success as a restaurateur excluded, her years were spent letting life live her rather than living her life.

I really enjoyed doing this as a buddy read with my friend Judy, even if she did leave me in the dust. Her questions and comments made me read more carefully, and we had some good laughs along the way. (less)

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Jan 21, 2013 Thing Two rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nyt-notable-book, aba-indies-choice-book-award-winner, ylto-rl-alphabet-challenge

I purchased this book for my husband last year; he generally enjoys reading memoir/cooking books. He got about a third of the way into this one and left to collect dust on his nightstand.

Must you like a person in order to enjoy reading their memoir? I appreciate Ms. Hamilton has a gift of the written word - and would have loved to know what else she learned earning her MFA other than her dislike of the program director - and she has had a variety of experiences from which to glean, but, in the...more

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Apr 12, 2013 Jackie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was unprepared for how this memoir spooled out. I was not familiar with Hamilton, or Prune, her restaurant in New York City, and was expecting a dainty kitchen memoir, even a tough one. But the book turned out to the be story of a marriage, and more, the story of a woman exploring her own identity and soul. This soul is deeply wrapped up in the kitchen, and that is how the kitchen enters the story: it's a background character that defines the shape of everything around it. As a passionate cook...more I was unprepared for how this memoir spooled out. I was not familiar with Hamilton, or Prune, her restaurant in New York City, and was expecting a dainty kitchen memoir, even a tough one. But the book turned out to the be story of a marriage, and more, the story of a woman exploring her own identity and soul. This soul is deeply wrapped up in the kitchen, and that is how the kitchen enters the story: it's a background character that defines the shape of everything around it. As a passionate cook who grew up in the restaurant business, as well as a former professional baker, I thoroughly identified with Hamilton's kitchen soul-connection and there were numerous passages that made the hairs on the back of my neck tingle with delighted recognition.

Nor was I expecting Hamilton's tough-girl persona. Cracking yet another food-related book, I was ready to read about another 'refined woman chef' in the mold of Alice Waters. But Hamilton immediately sets into how she grew up shabby-chic but poor, with artistic parentage, half of which was a French mother who was an expert practical and stereotypically Galllic taste. Gabrielle and her numerous siblings were half-raised as wolves compared to the average sterile, American suburban child. This makes her someone of whom we both disapprove (rifling during family parties though the coats and handbags of the guests to steal money) and silently egg on (cursing creatively in the restaurant kitchen).

Her mother's mastery of the kitchen seeps into Hamilton from infancy and I do think this describes the experience of most serious cooks - we were exposed to passionate cooking from childhood, usually in the form of some tradition or culture. The restaurant, then the kitchen itself, is the place where Hamilton grows up, becomes an adult, finds her lovers, meets her husband, and lastly, discovers, deepens and diversifies her own passions not just for food, but for literature, writing and connection with others. The core of the book becomes the relationship she develops in Italy with the Italian family - especially the mother - of her "Italian, Italian husband." This connection with her mother-in-law, though they do not speak the same language, becomes the driving creative force of her marriage, which though in itself relatively empty, also the way she is able to re-mother herself after long-estrangement from her own mother, and the way she begins to more deeply understand her own vocation, avocation and her maturing personality.

Ultimately, the best thing about this book for me was its core emphasis on the centrality of commensality. Instead of a quaint kitchen memoir, another romanticized travelogue with recipes for wannabe American expats relaxing in their Tuscan villas, or even a 'ya think ya know life in a kitchen, tough guy?' self-congratulation, this was a celebration of feeding people, eating together, loving and being loved, the way Jesus fed the masses with loaves and fishes. Such things are not just about the kitchen; they make up the core of what it means to be human in the company of others.(less)

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Jan 22, 2012 Judy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Judy by: erin brewster

Shelves: food, bio-memoir, pennsylvania, new-york, italy, vermont, 2012-reads

Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef tells the story of Gabrielle Hamilton's, owner of Prune Restaurant in NYC, dysfunctional childhood and the oasis she stumbled upon through cooking.

I experienced a jumble of emotions while reading this book. Disbelief over her parents abandonment of their children, frustration with Gabrielle's bitchiness and unwillingness to forge deep relationships, admiration of her perseverance and talent in cooking, and hope for her futur...more

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Sep 24, 2011 Mary rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

I read an article of hers in the latest Bon Appetite magazine and immediately purchased this book. I absolutely loved it and noticed myself parceling it out so that it would last longer. Even though the final part of the booked felt like it got off kilter and started to ramble, there were just so many great things I loved, that I had to give it five stars.
Some of the winning pages included:
‘Camping’ in the back yard with her brothers and sister ”…that voluptuous blanket of summer night humidity,...more

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Mar 20, 2011 Cynthia rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wanted to love this book, and there are passages that are simply delicious reading. Hamilton has a MFA in writing and so the structure is good and the language is interesting. Anthony Bourdain said this was the best Chef memoir ever - I'm guessing he doesn't read much because this book really misses the mark.

I enjoyed the first major section of the book, and I enjoyed the last sections about vacations in Italy. The rest of the book left me a bit bored and unmoved. Hamilton paints a picture of...more

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May 17, 2011 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Chris by: Michael-BOTNS

Shelves: food-essays-memoirs, non-fiction, 2011-reads

I am wavering between giving this 3 or 4 stars. It's more like 3 1/2.

Hamilton is the chef du jour in New York, as her restaurant, Prune, has won rave reviews. She doesn't sugar coat what it's like to run a restaurant. I think in this day and age of The Food Network, where chefs are superstars, many have a misconception of what it takes to own a restaurant, I myself being one of them. I have this fantasy of a hot kitchen, then going out to the dining room in my whites and receiving plaudits from...more

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Sep 25, 2011 RandomAnthony rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones, and Butter is as good a book I've read about the intersection between eating, cooking, and what we do with the hours in-between. Even though I'm a huge Anthony Bourdain fan but his work sometimes make me feel like I'm reading through a filter that stylizes the profession into a restaurant version of a movie like Goodfellas. I'm not a foodie. I microwave cheese on tortillas. Blood, Bones, and Butter doesn't engage in culinary industry mythmaking; the book is abo...more

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Feb 02, 2012 Lisa Lewis rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

This memoir of a chef initially impressed me due to the quality of the writing. While other similar books I have read are by chefs who have learned how to write, Gabrielle Hamilton struck me as a writer who also knew how to cook. Beautiful descriptions, a great sense of place. As the book went on, I became frustrated by her lack of openness. I thought, how can someone who has written an entire book about their own personal experiences give away so little of themselves? She didn't tell you how sh...more

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Nov 09, 2011 Lauren rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved this book. Loved it. At first I thought this was going to be another memoir about "how I fell in love with cooking during my already privileged life". But this one is different. Gabrielle is real. She has had an extraordinarily non-traditional and rough upbringing and is unflinchingly honest about it. So her story is interesting but what I loved most wasn't her unique story but that she is a really, really good writer. Beautiful, I would say. So once I got on board and realized that, I s...more

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Jun 05, 2011 Tracey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If you like odd-ball, quirky families that produce eccentric, talented, opinionated people...than read this book! A young women living in a house with no media influences with a French Mom and an artist Dad raise this lovely lady, Gabrielle, who knows what it means to live, eat and create.

She shares all sorts of life experience coupled with her passion for cooking...

For me, this is quintessential foodie reading. I love a good story, a talented writer and the distraction of someone cooking consta...more

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May 14, 2013 Katie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: holla-for-the-ladies, memoir, nonfiction, overrated, true-story

Wow. I really can't believe how utterly disappointed I was by this book. I skimmed the last 30 pages or so, I was so completely bored and sick of Hamilton.

Here's the thing, and I admit this freely: I was interested in this book because a year or two ago I read an interview with her from Anthony Bourdain in his collection of writing ("The Nasty Bits"). The Hamilton he fawns over, and that I was interested in, was not really in these pages. One of the quotes from said essay are when she says, "Fuc...more Wow. I really can't believe how utterly disappointed I was by this book. I skimmed the last 30 pages or so, I was so completely bored and sick of Hamilton.

Here's the thing, and I admit this freely: I was interested in this book because a year or two ago I read an interview with her from Anthony Bourdain in his collection of writing ("The Nasty Bits"). The Hamilton he fawns over, and that I was interested in, was not really in these pages. One of the quotes from said essay are when she says, "Fuck the French." And while her statement is given a sort of wink and smile by Bourdain, whoever wrote this book doesn't sound like someone who'd give an incredible sound bite like "Fuck the French." Sorry, that was awesome. I'm not saying someone needs to be vulgar to be interesting, or even blunt, but I can't recall one thing she wrote in this, under 10 words, that was as memorable as that.

This Hamilton struck me as, first, so ridiculously verbose it was nauseating. I actually laughed out loud when she was making fun of her fellow masters writing students; the style of this reeks of "writing writing like she thinks good writers write." And I insist that I thought that from the first page. I knew i was in trouble from then. It's a lot of adjectives, adverbs, and long, meandering descriptions of things while saying little of anything at all. I was left utterly confused as to who she was. Maybe she is, too. The whole thing felt like an exercise: "DESCRIBE butter melting. DESCRIBE. DESCRIBE." And that's it. Memoirs, to me, are supposed to involve at least some happenings, and relating those happenings to who you are, hopefully. This struck me as almost a word salad.

Another thing Bourdain stated in the essay (I"m sorry to keep referring to it, but it's a lot of why I was so disappointed by this) was how the mystery of her years abroad are stuff of chef legend. Nobody really knows what she did, and the rumors are rampant and hilarious, because she's such a bad ass. Even the back of the book mentions her time in Greece, Turkey, all over the place. And aside from her redundant discussions of her vacations in Italy with her husband (OMG WHAT IS THIS), we get basically nothing regarding her travels elsewhere. I think maybe it worked out to around 30 pages in a near-300 page book. Huh? It's literally like she goes from dishwasher, to waitress, to catering cook, to opening her own restaurant - which makes sense when written like that, in a way, but there's no insight into her actual education. I'm sorry, but just being a catering chef and cooking what you're told doesn't lead to a four-star, famous restaurant.

So, then, I can hear people saying, "Ah, yes, but it was her mother that taught her everything she knew!" Okay. Awesome. She says that about a thousand times too, in ten times as many words. But not realistic. Plenty of people have plenty of moms who are great cooks, and even may be chefs themselves, but I still came away not understanding exactly how her education worked, no matter how informal. I just felt like the success she achieved (and I'm not even remotely saying she doesn't deserve it; no one claims Prune sucks) wasn't correlated to anything in particular except some vague allusions to happenings she never really gets to the meat of.

I really got into for a bit when she opened the restaurant and then . . . That was it. It was just A Success. How? There are a lot of great little restaurants in NYC; anyone who's lived here more than a couple of years has one. But the chefs there aren't famous; the places aren't overflowing with people constantly. So, how did it happen? Even just a simple, "Word of mouth, so-in-so stopped by, and BOOM!" would've been good. I think her sister working at Saveur had something to do with it, but as I said, her writing style is so vague I had trouble getting what she was trying to say in terms of actual plots, as she was much more occupied with saying it in an artsy-fartsy fashion.

I could go on and on about this, but it'd end up like her memoir. 90% of my issue with the book was the writing. I just couldn't stand it. It was trying way, way too hard and took me right out of it. And if you write like that and actually are saying something, or sticking to a sequence of events, then fine. But there was nothing "holding" me to it, I guess. (less)

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May 12, 2013 Leon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Blood, Bones & Butter follows the chef Gabrielle Hamilton's extraordinary journey through the places she has inhabited over the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; and the kitchen of her beloved Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton's idyllic past and her

...more

Blood, Bones & Butter follows the chef Gabrielle Hamilton's extraordinary journey through the places she has inhabited over the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; and the kitchen of her beloved Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton's idyllic past and her own future family.

Unflinchingly honest, moving, beautifully crafted and funny, this is a rollicking, passionate story of food, purpose and family.

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2011: Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, is just what a chef's story should be--delectable, dripping with flavor, tinged with adrenaline and years of too-little sleep. What sets Hamilton apart, though, is her ability to write with as much grace as vitriol, a distinct tenderness marbling her meaty story. Hamilton spent her idyllic childhood on a wild farm in rural Pennsylvania with an exhilarant father--an artist and set builder--and French mother, both "incredibly special and outrageously handsome." As she entered her teens, however, her family unexpectedly dissolved. She moved to New York City at 16, living off loose change and eating ketchup packets from McDonald’s; worked 20-hour days at a soulless catering company; traveled, often half-starved, through Europe; and cooked for allergy-riddled children at a summer camp. The constant thread running through this patchwork tale, which culminates with the opening of her New York City restaurant, Prune, is Hamilton's slow simmering passion for cooking and the comfort it can bring. "To be picked up and fed, often by strangers, when you are in that state of fear and hunger, became the single most important food experience I came back to over and over," Hamilton writes, and it's this poignant understanding of the link between food and kindness that makes Blood, Bones & Butter so satisfying to read. --Lynette Mong

Guest Reviewer: Anthony Bourdain on *Blood, Bones, and Butter*

*Anthony Bourdain is the author of the novels Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo, in addition to the bestseller Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour. His work has appeared in the New York Times and The New Yorker, and he is a contributing authority for Food Arts magazine. He is also the host of the Emmy Award-winning television show *No Reservations.

Very quickly after meeting Gabrielle Hamilton, I understood why she was a terrific and much-admired chef. I knew that her restaurant, Prune, was ground-breaking, that she seemed to have come out of nowhere, instead of being a product of the "system" (she'd emerged from the invisible subculture of catering), to open one of the most quirky, totally uncompromising, and quickly-embraced restaurants in New York City. Her purportedly (but not really) Franco-phobic menus were intensely, notoriously personal, her early embrace of the nose-to-tail attitude was way, way ahead the times, and chefs--all chefs--seemed to like and respect her. Almost as quickly, it became apparent that this chef could write.

Short pieces appeared here and there over the years and they were sharp, funny, incisive, unsparing of both author and subjects--straight to the point and pretense-free, like Hamilton herself. She could write really well. And she had, from all accounts, a story to tell. So when it was announced that Blood, Bones, and Butter was in the works, I was very excited.

It was a long wait.

Five years later, I finally got my hands on an advance copy and eagerly devoured it. It was of course brilliant. I expected it to be. But I wasn't prepared for exactly how goddamn brilliant the thing was, or how enchanted, difficult, strange, rich, inspiring and just plain hard her life and career--her long road to Prune--had been. I was unprepared for page after page of such sharp, carefully-crafted, ballistically-precise sentences. I was, frankly, devastated. I put this amazing memoir down and wanted to crawl under the bed, retroactively withdraw every book, every page I'd ever written. And burn them.

Blood, Bones, and Butter is, quite simply, the far-and-away best chef or food-genre memoir...ever. EVER. It certainly kicked the hell out of my Kitchen Confidential, which suddenly, in a second, felt shallow, sophomoric and ultimately lightweight next to this...this monster of a book, this--at times--truly hardscrabble life…Blood, Bones, and Butter is deeper, better written, more hardcore, more fully fleshed-out; a more well-rounded story than every sunflower-and-saffron account of soft-core food porn in France. It's as bullshit and pretense-free as AJ Leibling--and at least as well written, but more poignant, romantic--even thrilling.

It makes any "as told to" account of famous chef's lives look instantly ludicrous and bloodless. I've struggled to think of somebody/anybody who's written a better account of the journey to chefdom and can't think of anyone who's come even close.

Writing a memoir of one's life as a chef--or even writing about one's relationship with food--has, with the publication of this book, become much more difficult. Hamilton has raised the bar higher than most of us could ever hope to reach. This book will sell a gazillion copies. It will be a bestseller. It will be an enduring classic. It will inspire generation after generation of young cooks, and anyone who really loves food and understands the context in which it is best enjoyed, NOT as some isolated, over-valued object of desire, but as only one important aspect of a larger, richer spectrum of experiences. Each plate of food--like the menu at Prune--is the end result of a long and sometimes very difficult struggle.

Read this book and prepare to clean your system of all that's come before. It's a game-changer and a truly great work by a great writer and great chef.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Owner and chef of New York's Prune restaurant, Hamilton also happens to be a trained writer (M.F.A., University of Michigan) and fashions an addictive memoir of her unorthodox trajectory to becoming a chef. The youngest of five siblings born to a French mother who cooked "tails, claws, and marrow-filled bones" in a good skirt, high heels, and apron, and an artist father who made the sets for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus, Hamilton spent her early years in a vast old house on the rural Pennsylvania–New Jersey border. With the divorce of her parents when she was an adolescent, the author was largely left to her own devices, working at odd jobs in restaurants. Peeling potatoes and scraping plates-"And that, just like that, is how a whole life can start." At age 16, in 1981, she got a job waiting tables at New York's Lone Star Cafe, and when caught stealing another waitress's check, she was nearly charged with grand larceny. After years of working as a "grunt" freelance caterer and going back to school to learn to write (inspired by a National Book Foundation conference she was catering), Hamilton unexpectedly started up her no-nonsense, comfort-food Prune in a charming space in the East Village in 1999. Hamilton can be refreshingly thorny (especially when it comes to her reluctance to embrace the "foodie" world), yet she is also as frank and unpretentious as her menu-and speaks openly about marrying an Italian man (despite being a lesbian), mostly to cook with his priceless Old World mother in Italy. (Mar.)
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Apr 30, 2013 Kater Cheek rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Memoirs I've read fall into one of four categories. There's the "My childhood is worse than your childhood" memoir, the "I am or hang out with famous people" memoir, the chef/restauranteur memoir, and the "traveled the world and met quaint people" memoir. This book hits all four of these categories, which is probably why it hit the bestseller list as well. It was so perfect, that the cynical and suspicious side of me wondered if some of it was fabricated, but in the end, I didn't care. It's a go...more Memoirs I've read fall into one of four categories. There's the "My childhood is worse than your childhood" memoir, the "I am or hang out with famous people" memoir, the chef/restauranteur memoir, and the "traveled the world and met quaint people" memoir. This book hits all four of these categories, which is probably why it hit the bestseller list as well. It was so perfect, that the cynical and suspicious side of me wondered if some of it was fabricated, but in the end, I didn't care. It's a good story, and Hamilton's MFA in creative writing was apparently not wasted money.

The first part "blood" talks about Hamilton's childhood growing up in a large family in an old silk mill on the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Her memories center around a party her parents used to throw every year, in which they roasted whole lambs over applewood fires. It's no secret to me why culinary memoirs are so good they deserve their own category. The descriptions of the sweet woodsmoke, the hiss of the infused oil, the scent of hay as the meadow is mowed, the glowing lanterns hanging from the trees--all these things made me want to rush down to the store and cook up some lambs for 40 or 50 of my closest friends.

Hamilton spends a lot of time describing her parents as well. Her father is an artist who makes props for the circus (and that could be one of the top ten coolest jobs I've ever heard about). Her mother is a very capable, very French housewife who makes the children eat tiny birds that "they would like to have kept as pets" and wears a cashmere skirt and heels when she goes to gather mushrooms. Alas, as happens so often, her parents engage in a selfish, tempestuous divorce and splinter the family into pieces. Hamilton is forgotten, and basically left to fend for herself at the age of thirteen. Not knowing what else to do, she gets a job as a dishwasher at a local restaurant, which leads to prep cook, which leads eventually up the line to chef.

This leads into the second section "bones" where Hamilton talks more about her younger years. She gets into trouble, goes back to school, eventually graduates and she decides she wants to travel around the world. She begs and borrows enough money for a plane ticket, and the next thing we know she's in France and in Greece, staying with friends of her parents. There's implication that she worked there too, which I marvel at, as even in the 90s it was almost impossible for an American to get a work visa overseas. This is the travel/quaint life part of the memoir, a sub category I feel is designed to inspire envy in its readers. I've read a few books in this category, and I love the hagiographic quality of them. The people in (insert country here) live better, more simply, more beautifully. These books are usually set in southern Europe, or occasionally Japan. They are overly romantic escapist books, and I am fond of reading them, even as I feel jealous of the authors. That said, my favorite part of this book was when Hamilton talked about feeling unhappy in her yearly vacation in Italy. She cracked the veneer of perfection on the "let's live in a charming southern European village" memoir and brought out that it's not really all that nice to eat fresh and local all the time if there are only four vegetables available. That it's great to have a villa, but not if you can't afford to fix it up and wouldn't be allowed to anyway, since it's not yours.

Hamilton continues from the travel memoir part by including stories of other jobs she had. She works in various kitchens, dates a few women, and then moves back to New York. Next thing you know, she's opening her own restaurant, despite not having run a restaurant before. In other memoirs, this might be the story about how a woman who takes a failed bistro and wastes a fortune trying to make it work, but Hamilton is made of stronger stuff than the average person.

Hamilton comes across as fierce, ambitious, and so hard working that it sometimes slips into martyrdom. I share some of these traits, but whereas I actually cry when stuff gets too stressful and seek balance in my life, Hamilton is superwoman. She fits in with the Italian women because all of them are accustomed to working from sunup to sundown, and Hamilton doesn't really ever sound like she expects or wants life to be different for her. Run a full time restaurant, and write a book, and have a baby? Bring it on! It wasn't until later on, in the "Butter" section, that she started to show some vulnerability, and even then, her vulnerability had nothing to do with lack of energy.

This book raised a lot of questions for me, not just how things happened, but why. Why couldn't she live with her mother that summer when she was thirteen? Why does a high school dropout with no money feel that matriculating at an expensive private college is a wise thing to do? How long did she travel, and how did she manage to pay for it, and where exactly did she go? How did she manage to make Prune into a successful restaurant when so many other experienced restaurateurs fail? Most baffling was why a lesbian would not just marry, but have children with a man she didn't care for all that much. It's more a collection of essays than a linear narrative, although it is chronological. I wouldn't be surprised if she had at least one more book in her.

I recommend this for people who like any of the four categories of memoir I listed in the first paragraph of this review.(less)

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Apr 23, 2013 Matthew rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: cooking, biography

I really wanted to like this book. The first chapter had me hooked; I loved learning about Hamilton's family and their annual feast and the traditions that surrounded it. The story of the party was great, and as we met each of Hamilton's family members, it seemed like we were in for an entertaining series of stories populated by interesting characters. It was not to be. As the book continued, rather than reading about the positive experiences of her life, we are constantly exposed to ever-increa...more I really wanted to like this book. The first chapter had me hooked; I loved learning about Hamilton's family and their annual feast and the traditions that surrounded it. The story of the party was great, and as we met each of Hamilton's family members, it seemed like we were in for an entertaining series of stories populated by interesting characters. It was not to be. As the book continued, rather than reading about the positive experiences of her life, we are constantly exposed to ever-increasingly dysfunctional and depressing life stories that fail to reflect and capture how the author rose to become a great cook with her own highly-reviewed restaurant. Overall, the story falls flat with the interesting pieces lost beneath the piles of discarded emotions left in the author's wake.

As more and more of Hamilton's life is revealed to us, the less likeable she is as a person, which is very sad and not reflective of her at all from what I had learned through other media. With every facet of her family life that is uncovered, there is little to like--in fact, there is more to not like--about the author. Perhaps she was seeking to show us how someone can struggle through life's troubles and still, almost on a whim, open and run a successful restaurant. But even this saps the energy from the book as it seems she spends more time complaining about the amount of work that goes into running a restaurant and less about the experience itself.

Fortunately, in the middle of the book, there are scenes that are enjoyable. Her time at camp with the lobster mishap was a fun read and her story about taking the writing courses and dealing with the "writer's group" was hilarious and very relatable for anyone who has ever fancied themselves a writer.

Sadly, these are the few examples of the parts of the book that are enjoyable. Clearly, Hamilton is passionate about food--we see that in the chapters detailing the unraveling of her marriage through their annual trips to Italy. I wanted more of this passion from the author and less of the stories about the dysfunctionality of her family, both her immediate family and the family she married into. Sadly, none of this passion is captured in any of her other vignettes and toward the end of the book I was just glad to have it over and done with. (less)

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Mar 12, 2013 LH rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

3.5 stars.
So many people had recommended this book to me, I thought I'd love it. Did not love it.
It seemed disjointed, like whole pieces are missing. Maybe it was badly edited down from a much larger book, as Hamilton does try to cover her ENTIRE life. Hamilton presents her young self as a somewhat self-destructive fuck-up, then gets into NYU. . . and drops out. Bounces into temporary industrial catering/cooking jobs, and then decides on getting a Masters in Creative Writing and then boom--- s...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Brittany rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The alternate title for this book:
I Have an Italian Husband (But I Totally Didn't Mean To) and Other Reasons Why I'm Totally a Legitimate Chef.

At first, Hamilton tries to take the Feminist-Answer-to-Anthony-Bourdain angle: I never wanted to be a chef! I was a bad girl druggie! I was in the kitchen being vulgar and sexual with all the male cooks in my kitchen but I was also educated!
Unfortunately, Bourdain actually has wit, something that Hamilton is sorely lacking--some of her stories are inte...more The alternate title for this book:
I Have an Italian Husband (But I Totally Didn't Mean To) and Other Reasons Why I'm Totally a Legitimate Chef.

At first, Hamilton tries to take the Feminist-Answer-to-Anthony-Bourdain angle: I never wanted to be a chef! I was a bad girl druggie! I was in the kitchen being vulgar and sexual with all the male cooks in my kitchen but I was also educated!
Unfortunately, Bourdain actually has wit, something that Hamilton is sorely lacking--some of her stories are interesting, but they constantly give the impression that she wants us to think of her as extremely ~deep and meaningful~.

She must have found out this doesn't work, because she switches tactics halfway through the book and becomes that one friend you knew in school if you lived in a small town: she's the one telling you she's related to Princess Di, that she visits London every spring just in time for the roses and the horse races, and oh-my-god if you've never had a REAL mint julep you haven't liiiiived darling.

Her locale of choice is Italy. Partially because of her Accidental Italian Husband (but we don't talk very much and we're not romantic, she assures us), but mostly because it's the perfect backdrop for her to brag about her Totally Rustic and Real Italian Family and how she never buys produce from anyone but the old man on the side of the road because stores are too clueless and farmer's markets are for hipsters...but, she fails to realize that she's a foodie hipster herself, denouncing everything but the Rustic and Authentic and Undiscovered, as if food is some sort of secret only for those who pass some sort of culinary test of wills that apparently involves beheading chickens somehow.

Yeah, we know, Gabrielle, your mother was French, your husband's Italian, and you're in the boys club of chefs even though GODDAMN IT'S SO HARD TO DO WHILE WRANGLING TWO KIDS.

Maybe if you want to feel legitimized as a chef and not a "female" chef, you should take your own advice and focus on what you do rather than your oh-so-unique-womanly-struggles or the fact that you use your family to give yourself permission to cook...it'd probably be a less eye-rolling read, anyway.(less)

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Feb 17, 2013 Roberta Roberti rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 12, 2013 Rebecca rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After the last two books I read which dealt with heavy subjects I needed something different.
This fit the bill. It was different and actually not too "foodie" as it tells the story of a chef.

So you have a girl who has a French mother and an artist father. Let's just say meatloaf was probably not served regularly or mac and cheese (the box kind). Her youth sounds ideal until the parents split up and Gabrielle (the chef) has a rough time. Through it all she remembered the food of her youth. I am g...more

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Jan 29, 2013 LA Carlson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: romantics

Shelves: historial-memoir

From the opening pages of this memoir we instantly realize the only routine thing about Gabrielle Hamilton's family is her parents threw a party each year and that is where the normal ends. Born from an artistic father and a French mother her home life with 4 older siblings appears to have been an adventure as she raves about being drawn to her parents. Her mother's kitchen and her father's flare for creating anything is to be envied. Early on Gabrielle shows a love for things others maybe turne...more

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Jan 23, 2013 Debby rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A big reason I loved this book is that I love food and good writing, and Blood, Bones, and Butter served up both. I could relate to a lot of Hamilton's experiences -- her family falling apart, her struggle to figure out what she wanted to do with her life, the crazy kitchen scenes, her feelings of disconnect in the MFA program at the University of Michigan. Sometimes I read a memoir because I'm fascinated with the writer and want to learn more about him/her. I knew nothing about Hamilton; I want...more

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Jan 12, 2013 Mary Wilt rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not (as I feared) an at-length, ad nauseum "education of a chef" at all; an autobiography of a talented writer who loved writing but ended up being a chef. Interesting but so many unanswered and unexamined facets of her life are left hanging. Possibly the appalling trauma of near abandonment in early adolescence by her divorcing parents, which left her an a sibling home by themselves, the other older sibs flung far and wide, have left her unable to look deeply at certain areas of her life. The p...more

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Jan 11, 2013 S rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Original review at my blog, Writing by Numbers, here.

This was a splendidly escapist read for me. What if I shed my neuroses about collecting academic accolades and took a job where nobody gave a damn as long as I shut up and kept up? What if I traveled indefinitely, working whatever job was handy, knowing a kitchen could be my home?

Chef Hamilton takes her readers on a vibrant journey through her past. She is an honest narrator, upfront with her neuroses, her vulnerabilities, and her deep, deep l...more

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Dec 26, 2012 Mimi Jones rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hamilton offers some vivid writing about food and the hot, chaotic, exhausting work of running a restaurant. But this book left me unsatisfied. It reads like a collection of separate essays rather than a coherent memoir that yields an understanding of how the author's various experiences and relationships add up. The ending just drops off a cliff; there are repetitions; the chronology leaps around; big questions are never answered.

Among these questions are: Why did the author's parents abandon...more

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