Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany

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Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany

3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 · rating details · 12,600 ratings · 1,490 reviews

Bill Buford—author of the highly acclaimed best-selling Among the Thugs—had long thought of himself as a reasonably comfortable cook when in 2002 he finally decided to answer a question that had nagged him every time he prepared a meal: What kind of cook could he be if he worked in a professional kitchen? When the opportunity arose to train in the kitchen of Mario Batali’s...more Bill Buford—author of the highly acclaimed best-selling Among the Thugs—had long thought of himself as a reasonably comfortable cook when in 2002 he finally decided to answer a question that had nagged him every time he prepared a meal: What kind of cook could he be if he worked in a professional kitchen? When the opportunity arose to train in the kitchen of Mario Batali’s three-star New York restaurant, Babbo, Buford grabbed it. Heat is the chronicle—sharp, funny, wonderfully exuberant—of his time spent as Batali’s “slave” and of his far-flung apprenticeships with culinary masters in Italy.

In a fast-paced, candid narrative, Buford describes the frenetic experience of working in Babbo’s kitchen: the trials and errors (and more errors), humiliations and hopes, disappointments and triumphs as he worked his way up the ladder from slave to cook. He talks about his relationships with his kitchen colleagues and with the larger-than-life, hard-living Batali, whose story he learns as their friendship grows through (and sometimes despite) kitchen encounters and after-work all-nighters.

Buford takes us to the restaurant in a remote Appennine village where Batali first apprenticed in Italy and where Buford learns the intricacies of handmade pasta . . . the hill town in Chianti where he is tutored in the art of butchery by Italy’s most famous butcher, a man who insists that his meat is an expression of the Italian soul . . . to London, where he is instructed in the preparation of game by Marco Pierre White, one of England’s most celebrated (or perhaps notorious) chefs. And throughout, we follow the thread of Buford’s fascinating reflections on food as a bearer of culture, on the history and development of a few special dishes (Is the shape of tortellini really based on a woman’s navel? And just what is a short rib?), and on the what and why of the foods we eat today.

Heat is a marvelous hybrid: a richly evocative memoir of Buford’s kitchen adventure, the story of Batali’s amazing rise to culinary (and extra-culinary) fame, a dazzling behind-the-scenes look at the workings of a famous restaurant, and an illuminating exploration of why food matters.

It is a book to delight in—and to savor.(less)

Hardcover, 336 pages

Published May 30th 2006 by Knopf (first published January 1st 2006)

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Community Reviews

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May 15, 2008 Valerie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I started reading Heat without any prior knowledge of Mario Batali. I'd never cooked from any of his cookbooks, or seen his show. That said, the book was an interesting look at his life - an absolutely crazy one filled with gluttony, extreme restaurant hours and seemingly never-ending partying.

But the focus of the book is not only Batali (although he steals the show, in my opinion). Actually written by Bill Buford about his time spent in one of Batali's restaurant kitchens (Babbo in NYC), Heat a...more I started reading Heat without any prior knowledge of Mario Batali. I'd never cooked from any of his cookbooks, or seen his show. That said, the book was an interesting look at his life - an absolutely crazy one filled with gluttony, extreme restaurant hours and seemingly never-ending partying.

But the focus of the book is not only Batali (although he steals the show, in my opinion). Actually written by Bill Buford about his time spent in one of Batali's restaurant kitchens (Babbo in NYC), Heat also tells the story of his progression from home chef (and former New Yorker writer) to that of a line-cook and ultimately a pasta maker at the restaurant. It also serves as a memoir of his own time spent in Italy learning to cook pasta and butcher, as well as a history of Italian food.

I felt that the most interesting parts were those chronicling his time in the kitchen at Babbo and telling Batali's personal story. The parts that, in the end, were the least interesting to me were those detailing the regional gastronomy of Italy, or the history of pasta... even as a person interested in food and cooking, some of these histories just went into too much detail and were too lengthy to hold my interest (for example, a seemingly unending chapter on when and why cooks starting adding eggs to their pasta dough). I was starting to lose interest in finishing the book, but what I found to be the most engaging part of Buford's personal experience (working with one of the best butchers in Italy) drew me back in.

Heat did inspire me to check out some Batali cookbooks from the library, because since I finished reading it I've been having some incredible cravings for pasta with Bolognese sauce. It's also another book in the same vein of those that emphasize knowing your food - where it comes from, its quality, and really how to cook and enjoy it - that seem to be all the rage these days.

If you: A) are really into Mario Batali, or are: B) willing to hand-roll sheets of pasta until they're translucent, or are: C) considering buying a whole pig at the farmer's market and butchering it yourself in your apartment, this is likely the book for you.(less)

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Jul 02, 2007 Kim rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: culinary adventurers

Shelves: finished

I had mixed feelings on this one. It started out swimmingly--I was howling with laughter as the author detailed the highs (including the extracurricular highs) and the lows of the Babbo employment experience. I was shocked (in a highly amused way) by the author's description of Batali. Surely, the soft-spoken, well-mannered guy I cheer for on Iron Chef America could not be telling his servers to "pistol-whip" unruly customers with their unmentionables behind Babbo's closed doors! (If true, as a...more

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Oct 05, 2007 Amanda Wilkins rated it 4 of 5 stars

A must-read for foodies and Slow Foodies.

In one passage of the book, Bill Buford becomes preoccupied with researching when, in the long history of food on the Italian peninsula, cooks started putting eggs into their pasta dough. He decides to go on a quest to Italy and meets with the cook at La Volta, a small restaurant in the town of Porretta Terme. Mario Batali lived and worked here during an internship before going to New York and opening Babbo. He considers the cook, Betta, and all the othe...more

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Apr 24, 2007 Jenny rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read06, foodie, favorites

I have to admit I picked this up because Anthony Bourdain was reading it on his show "No Reservations" (and he wrote Kitchen Confidential). This is the story of an editor for the New Yorker who ends up in the kitchens of Mario Batali - it is an encounter of his experiences in the kitchen, plus a biography of Mario, plus a history of food - all at the same time. I really enjoyed this. It took me back to my restaurant days, expressing the outrageous kitchen culture that you would not believe if yo...more I have to admit I picked this up because Anthony Bourdain was reading it on his show "No Reservations" (and he wrote Kitchen Confidential). This is the story of an editor for the New Yorker who ends up in the kitchens of Mario Batali - it is an encounter of his experiences in the kitchen, plus a biography of Mario, plus a history of food - all at the same time. I really enjoyed this. It took me back to my restaurant days, expressing the outrageous kitchen culture that you would not believe if you hadn't experienced it too. Following are quotations that were meaningful to me (I'm not sure they make sense out of context).

"Holly was offered a job. It paid five hundred dollars a week, with five days' vacation starting in her second year. There was no mention of sick pay because it was understood you didn't get sick, which I'd already discovered in the chilly silence that had greeted me when I'd come down with the flu and phoned Elisa to say that I wasn't coming in that day...."

"In fact, without my fully realizing it, there was an education in the frenzy, because in hte frenzy there was always repetition. Over and over again, I'd pick up a smell, as a task was being completed, until finally I came to identify not only what the food was but where it was in its preparation... One day I was given a hundred and fifty lamb tongues. I had never held a lamb's tongue, which I found greasy and unnervingly humanlike. But after cooking, trimming, peeling, and slicing a hundred and fifty lam tognues, I was an expert."

"Give a chef an egg, and you'll know what kind of cook he is. It takes a lot to cook an egg." (This just made me laugh because in my restaurant kitchen, the CIA-trained grill cook could not poach an egg to save his life, and actually destroyed an entire dozen one day before the chef asked me to do it, and I only knew how because I'd read about it)

"In addition to the endless riffing about cooking-with-love, chefs also talk about the happiness of making food: not preparing or cooking food but making it." (passage goes on in detail about the satisfaction of the aesthetic pleasure as well as other people finding satisfaction in what you have made)

"The yelling, too, was not without its life lessons. When Frankie was abusing me, he was always doing it for a reason. He was trying to make me a better cook."

There are so many more I could quote but they are too long - one page describes this day in a Florentine kitchen where the author trips, splits his head open, and catches on fire, and it is so freaking hilarious. I highly recommend this book.(less)

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Sep 05, 2007 Andrew rated it 2 of 5 stars

i got this to read on the airplane, and it did an admirable job for that precise purpose. but there's one thing that's a real problem for this book. About halfway through, he ends a chapter saying he has to leave New York to deal with "personal demons." Fine. But he never mentions what they are/ were. And the book is all under the guise of a kind of memoir. If he's not going to tell the reader what those demons are, don't use it as a cliffhanger/ enticement to keep reading. Not only is it suprem...more

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Mar 24, 2009 Catherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009, italy, mainstream-us

I loved this book a whole lot - and warn that should you tackle it, please do so with a large amount of red wine and italian food readily available. Much like it's torture to watch Chocolat without chocolate, it would be rude not to eat pasta and drink red wine while this book's in your life.

The book's an amalgamation of many things I love - cooking, peeking behind the scenes at famous restaurants, drinking wine, contemplating where food does and should come from. Buford spent just over a year s...more

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Apr 01, 2012 Dolly rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: foodies

Shelves: van-noy-book-club, 2012, cooking-recipes, france-french, italy, nonfiction, other-usa

I don't think I would ever have picked this book out for myself, but it was the March selection for my book club, so I thought I would give it a shot. It has the trappings of a man's version of the first third of Eat, Pray, Love, but involves a lot more slicing and dicing.

To be honest, it was a bit of a slog to get through, but I persisted and gleaned a few small nuggets of wisdom. I also learned about a semi-famous fifteenth century chef who just might have some connection to my hubby's family...more

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Mar 25, 2009 Rebecca rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, yum, biography-memoir, read2009

Wow, I enjoyed this way more than I expected! On more than one occasion I ate lunch in my car so I could keep listening. Hilarious, insightful, and mouth-watering. Buford's taste in food is just a bit different from mine - I can't count the pounds of "lardo" that he consumes over the telling - but his journey feels very kindred. Amateur cook learns skills, travels to Italy, appreciates homemade traditional food. Except he happens to be completely obsessive and surrounded by larger than life char...more Wow, I enjoyed this way more than I expected! On more than one occasion I ate lunch in my car so I could keep listening. Hilarious, insightful, and mouth-watering. Buford's taste in food is just a bit different from mine - I can't count the pounds of "lardo" that he consumes over the telling - but his journey feels very kindred. Amateur cook learns skills, travels to Italy, appreciates homemade traditional food. Except he happens to be completely obsessive and surrounded by larger than life characters and a writer by profession.

I loved all of the elements that Buford wove together, but the only reason the book doesn't make the 5 star cut is that it did feel completely schizophrenic at times, like he couldn't decide if he was writing a memoir, a biography of Mario Batali, or a history of Italian Renaissance cooking. It jumps back and forth thematically and chronologically, so you just kind of have to give up trying to follow along and take from it what you will.

Piles of bonus points for a book about meat with the utmost respect for the animals. He even writes that he appreciates vegetarians because they are among the few people who actually THINK about meat.

Also, I get cranky when I read too much about locavores and the green revolution and won't someone pleeease think of the children blah blah blah. So much better when someone recognizes traditional food as this powerfully conservative force. He has a beautiful passage about how the essence of what he has learned comes down to handmade. Indulge me in an extensive quote...

"Italians have a word, casalinga, homemade, although its primary sense is "made by hand." My theory is just a variant of casalinga. (Small food: by hand and therefore precious, hard to find. Big food: from a factory and therefore cheap, abundant.) Just about every preparation I learned in Italy was handmade and involved my learning how to use my own hands differently. My hands were trained to roll out dough, to use a knife to break down a thigh, to make sausage or lardo or polpetone. With some techniques, I had to make my hands small, like Betta's. With others, I made them big, like the Maestro's. The hands, Dario says, are everything. With them, cooks express themselves, like artists. With them, they make food that people use their hands to eat. With the hands, Dario passes on to me what he learned from his father. With the hands, Betta gives me her aunts. The hands of Miriam's mother, her grandmothers. The hands of Dario's grandfather, the great-grandfather he never met, except indirectly, in what was passed on through his hands.

Miriam, who can't get a pastina to roll out the dough, no longer makes handmade pasta. When her daughter takes over, will she roll it out by hand? In Tuscany, you can't get the meat at the heart of the region's cooking, so Dario and the Maestro found a small farm that reproduces the intensity of flavor they grew up with. How long will that taste memory last? The Maestro will die. Dario will die. I will die. The memory will die. Food made by hand is an act of defiance and runs contrary to everything in our modernity. Find it; eat it; it will go. It has been around for millennia. Now it is evanescent, like a season." (less)

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Feb 02, 2011 Tom Carrico rated it 5 of 5 stars

Book Review

Heat by Bill Buford
Reviewed by Tom Carrico

Bill Buford is a former editor of the “The New Yorker” magazine, founding editor of “Granta” magazine and publisher of Granta Books. His hobby was cooking. He cooked for friends and business associates and on one occasion for the renowned chef Mario Batali. That occasion prompted Mr. Buford to quit his job at “The New Yorker” and sign on as an unpaid intern at Batali’s three star Italian restaurant Babbo in New York City. This book is part mem...more Book Review

Heat by Bill Buford
Reviewed by Tom Carrico

Bill Buford is a former editor of the “The New Yorker” magazine, founding editor of “Granta” magazine and publisher of Granta Books. His hobby was cooking. He cooked for friends and business associates and on one occasion for the renowned chef Mario Batali. That occasion prompted Mr. Buford to quit his job at “The New Yorker” and sign on as an unpaid intern at Batali’s three star Italian restaurant Babbo in New York City. This book is part memoir of that experience, part travelogue, part history of Italian cooking and part observatory character studies of the eccentric personalities the author encountered. Add to this mixture a large aliquot of humor and you have the recipe for a thoroughly enjoyable book.

The memoir portion of the book details his rise from “kitchen slave” to line cook (which included a stint at the grill station) and finally to pasta maker. The author’s misadventures, including dicing the carrots too small, multiple injuries (including splatter burns and minor lacerations) and wasting food are all humorously documented. The amazing aspect of all of this to me was how much this experience (although only lasting about a year) was reminiscent of my surgical residency. The graded responsibility, the general fault-finding and learning from mistakes all seemed remarkably similar to that experience. Initially, his superiors criticize every move and use every mistake as a “teaching opportunity” (usually involving screaming). As he moves up the responsibility ladder, Mr. Buford relates his frustration when the kitchen manager (who in my mind represented the Surgical Chief Resident) demanding that certain orders be replated immediately for no apparent reason.

The even more fascinating portions of the book come about when Chef Batali talks to the author (“talking” here includes earsplitting fits of anger) and informs him that the only way to truly understand the art of cooking Italian food was to go to Italy and learn it first hand. This is, in fact, the way Batali learned. The author does indeed make many trips to Italy. First he learns the fine art of pasta making from women who run a small restaurant and were taught their skills by their mother and their aunts, who in turn were taught by their mothers and aunts. The reader learns the difference between pastasciutta and pasta fresca, when the egg was first introduced into the ingredients (it turns out nobody, including the curators of the Pasta Museum in Italy, are exactly sure, although sometime in the 13th century is a good guess), and why machine made pasta is unacceptable. On a return trip to Panzano (near Tuscany), Mr. Buford learns the art of the butcher from Dario Cecchini, who comes from a long line of master butchers. Dario has the interesting habit of intermittently screaming long excerpts from The Divine Comedy alternating with singing excerpts from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” while he works. These “performances” are fueled by generous amounts of alcohol. The meticulous care of knives, the various cuts of meat from pigs and cows and the appreciation for the preparation of meats as an art form are detailed.
The cast of characters which Mr. Buford meets while working at Babbo (including the maestro Batali) and traveling and living in Italy is colorful and very amusingly described by the author and is one of the strengths of Heat. This cast includes the characters already described above as well as the other restaurant workers who jealously guard their secrets of success, the Italians who courageously defend their ancient cooking arts in a modern world as well as the menagerie which makes up the restaurant world in New York City (including patrons, competing chefs and newspaper food critics).

I don’t know if this was the best book to read while trying to adopt a “heart-healthy” diet and mode of living, but I know that even under those circumstances this was a thoroughly enjoyable, entertaining, humorous and even informative book. Heat by Bill Buford is available in trade paperback from Vintage Books.
(less)

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Jan 14, 2008 Carol rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: No one.

When I first started this book, I asked my friend Jen what she thought of it. Not much, apparently; she didn't find the author "compelling". It was just boring, even for an amateur cook like me. He describes things (like when egg was first introduced as an ingredient in pasta) that he says most people would not be interested in, and then goes on and on ad nauseum about them. If you know they are not interesting to people, then why go into detail about them? It is odd that he was an editor for Th...more When I first started this book, I asked my friend Jen what she thought of it. Not much, apparently; she didn't find the author "compelling". It was just boring, even for an amateur cook like me. He describes things (like when egg was first introduced as an ingredient in pasta) that he says most people would not be interested in, and then goes on and on ad nauseum about them. If you know they are not interesting to people, then why go into detail about them? It is odd that he was an editor for The New Yorker. He seemed to use the same words over and over. I thought "evanescent" must be his new favorite word since he used it to describe everyone and everything. It also occurred to me that he wasn't a very likable person, either. It was clear that he enjoyed starting trouble. He didn't seem to have any loyalty to the chefs who were teaching him. He told Dario's secrets about where he obtained his meat to Dario's arch enemy, for example. The book is full of gossip about his teachers, including Mario Batali, and he also makes sure to attribute it to someone else ... (I'm just sayin'...). He was pretty impressed with himself and the obscure facts he could find out about gastronomy. I agree with him that most people don't want to know about how their hamburger came to be; I certainly don't. And maybe we should take some responsibility for what we eat. However, his description of butchering and detailed passages about the uses of what most people would consider the inedible parts of an animal were enough to turn me away from steak forever and possibly turn me into a vegetarian! At the end of the book, it sounds as if Batali and he are still friends but I wonder if that changed once Batali read it. Certainly, it is no news that Batali is a wild man and a hard partier; however, I felt the author's representation of him was small and mean-spirited, especially considering that a kitchen on the level of Babbo would, as he himself admitted, never take on a home chef without formal kitchen education or experience. The author is an ingrate, and I found him (and subsequently his book) distasteful. He moves his wife all over the world with disregard for her job(she's an editor-in-chief of a major magazine in New York, I believe) on his whim. He ends the book with the fact that Mario offered him a restaurant (and of course getting in that now he knew stuff Mario didn't know) but that he was now going to go to France! Great advertisement for a sequel, wouldn't you say? (less)

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Sep 08, 2010 Siobhan Fallon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Some of this book is amazing, but I found it uneven as a whole. I picked it up because I was curious about Mario Batali, but the Batali of this book is the least interesting character of all. The final chapters, when Bill Buford goes to Italy to apprentice with a butcher, are absolutely gorgeous.
Bill Buford was an editor at the New Yorker and his breath of knowledge shows. He is best when discussing Italy, everything from the making of tortellini (and the rumor that they are modeled after the p...more

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Sep 04, 2007 Sean rated it 4 of 5 stars

Food as:

- a business
- an artform
- an intellectual interest
- a link to the soil
- a tenuous and evocative link to the past

plus:

- recipes (of a sort, since recipes are for home cooks, we learn) for linguine with clams, the tuscan version of beef bourginion, and more
- mario batali is a foul-mouthed drunk who loves the ladies
- restaurant kitchens are no place for the myth and mystery of food (e.g., the $29 bowl of "peasant" soup made from scraps); dried pasta served at high-end italian restaurants

buf...more

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Mar 31, 2009 Laurel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Well, I love the premise of this book, and I began it with gusto (insert lame gastronomy joke here), but it became a little too detailed and meandering in parts for me and I lost interest.

I was really excited by Buford's accounts of working in the kitchen at Babbo, a restaurant I used to walk by, gaze longingly towards, but never ate at. It sort of read like a long New Yorker article, which makes sense, and is a good thing, but began to wear thin when Buford travels to Italy (See Valerie's revie...more

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Dec 07, 2007 Annika rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who wants to know what it's like to work in a kitchen

This book gives a fun peak inside the world of a 3-star New York kitchen. Buford is at his best when describing the Babbo kitchen where he initially starts his education. His travels to Italy give you a sense of the eccentric characters that eventually teach him to make pasta and carve meat. However, his almost irrelevant search for the exact moment an egg was introduced to the recipe for pasta becomes long-winded. He delves into the history of Italian recipes but his references sometimes seem l...more

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Nov 27, 2007 Jean rated it 2 of 5 stars

So far, so good... makes working in a glamorous restaurant not so glamorous... Ok, I've finally finished the book and the beginning is definitely better than the middle and the end. Sort of confirmed by suspicion that despite my gastronomic ambitions, I'm not cut out for a professional kitchen. However, the book makes that point early for me with the author's torturous experience at Babbo. But he just keeps on torturing himself with these forced apprenticeships with various Italian artisans. Aft...more

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Jul 08, 2007 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I enjoyed the descriptions of food and of Italy, but I frequently found myself comparing Buford's self-assigned temporary experience as a journalist-turned-culinary-kind-of-person to Bordain's authentic experience as an actual chef in Kitchen Confidential . Overall, I preferred Bordain's account of the fast-and-furious culinary lifestyle.

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Aug 08, 2011 Christine Kuchinsky added it · review of another edition

This definitely demonstrates the difference between a home cook and a restaurant chef. Bufford, on a whim, ventures into the kitchen of Babbo to learn from the kitchen of Mario Batali. His struggle to master what would seem to be the simplest of tasks (dicing carrots) highlights the work that goes on behind the scenes at one of New York's top restaurants. Bufford details accounts with Batali, Marco Pierre White, learning to make pasta in Italy (and learning to make tortellini that he swore he wo...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

When great reportage meets a great subject it's a recipe for success, and Bill Buford, a staff writer at the New Yorker, rises to the occasion. As in his previous book, Among the Thugs, on soccer hooligans, he revels in his cast of alpha males, especially "Falstaff with a spatula" (Washington Post) Mario Batali. Heat doesn't fit neatly into a category: it's a hearty helping of immersive journalism with a dash of Batali biography and a pinch of gastronomic history tossed in for good measure. Thi

...more

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May 20, 2013 Greg Stinson rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book starts out starting as a bibliography of Mario Batali, which probably would have been interesting enough and sufficient for me, but then it goes in so many interesting directions, particularly towards the question that I wonder about all the time: How was Italian food developed? He focuses this search on one specific question: When was egg added to pasta dough? and goes through several apprenticeships around Italy that fill in many answers.

I found the book beautifully written.

I need to...more

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Sep 20, 2012 Nell Nassiff rated it 3 of 5 stars

Heat opens with a dream scenario: Mario Batali, showing up at the narrator's house for a dinner party. We, the reader, are shown what a fantastic, infamous personality Batali really is, and why he is so inspiring as a chef (and Professional Party Boy). I quickly identified with Bill, the main character, as he gains the courage to leave his great job as an editor for the New Yorker to move to the bottom of the food chain-literally- as a prep cook at Babbo. As a twenty-something just beginning my...more

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Jan 09, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

I will be completely honest, when the tale of this story was related to Mario Batali or his restaurant, Babbo, I really didn't care for this book. Once Buford went to Italy and Tuscany I really got into the book. Is this book 4 star quality, no. Since I can't give 3.5 or 3.75 then 4 is the closest because it isn't wholely a 3 star book either. When Buford goes to Italy to learn how to make pasta the traditional way the story begins the adventure and as he repeatedly goes back to Italy/Tuscany it...more I will be completely honest, when the tale of this story was related to Mario Batali or his restaurant, Babbo, I really didn't care for this book. Once Buford went to Italy and Tuscany I really got into the book. Is this book 4 star quality, no. Since I can't give 3.5 or 3.75 then 4 is the closest because it isn't wholely a 3 star book either. When Buford goes to Italy to learn how to make pasta the traditional way the story begins the adventure and as he repeatedly goes back to Italy/Tuscany it furthers that food is an essential part of family. By that i mean, the people take their food prep skills very seriously and nothing short of perfect is acceptable, almost like the daunting approval seeking relationship between a child and parent. The people that teach Buford skills that he will remember for a life time become his family and friends. Simple gestures like leaving his knife steel is seen as an act of pride and true friendship. The people Buford met on his journey are people that he probably still keeps in contact with and sees on a semi-regular basis. When he wrote about them, I got the impression, these people truly touched his life and left their mark forever on his history. It was almost as if i went with Buford on his journeys and was standing beside him being the same keen student he was, sucking in the knowledge these incredible people had to offer or at least allowed him to have the privilege of seeing.

The reason i didn't like the Mario Batali parts: i found him to be a pompus character (even when watching him on tv, which is very impersonal, i find him to be unbareable, so this indepth time with him was a bit much.), the restaurant lifestyle is so fast paced and it's almost like there is a revolving door on the industry (if you can't hack it move on to the next place that will try you and chalk up your abilities. Those were the main two reasons. I found it sad that Buford held Batali in such high regard but in the same sentence some of the things Batali does......he is a flavour genius. (less)

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Dec 22, 2011 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: food_porn, magic-carpet, treasure

Most food writing is shit. It wallows in superlatives as brazenly as real estate hustings. But really good writing about food makes the heart soar.

This is in the second category. Partially because Buford is so craven, so desperate to GET what it is like being young, dumb and full of come in a kitchen more stuffed with wise-asses and borderline personality disorders than the average martini olive.

Lots of guys take up lycra and the bike for their mid-life thingo. Or get expensive mistresses. Or fo...more Most food writing is shit. It wallows in superlatives as brazenly as real estate hustings. But really good writing about food makes the heart soar.

This is in the second category. Partially because Buford is so craven, so desperate to GET what it is like being young, dumb and full of come in a kitchen more stuffed with wise-asses and borderline personality disorders than the average martini olive.

Lots of guys take up lycra and the bike for their mid-life thingo. Or get expensive mistresses. Or foreign cars (the same thing, really). Buford rather sadly wants to cut it on the line in a four star restaurant. He is known as “kitchen bitch”.

Happily for the reader, as a long-time food obsessed New Yorker staff writer with serious “chops” (sorry) in the descriptive department, it’s a pretty great ride for the reader.

Things I learnt from Bill Buford:
1.Mario Batali is deeply unlikeable.
2.Kitchens are the most unreconstructed misogynist bastions imaginable. Still.
3.Italians love a gesture. The thing that makes it ineffably charming, which gives it gravitas, is that they LIVE by such gestures. Even if it makes their lives in some ways suck.

I was tempted to deduct points from Buford’s giant schwing (sentimental and gee whiz all at the same time which is some feat for an erection) for artisanal production. YES, food made by hand is better. YES, frankenstein food production is a truly terrible side-effect of globalisation. But I’ve heard it a lot. And it doesn’t explain how in reality non-yuppies in urban settings can readily afford organic/local meats and produce. Other than to grown it, which is a HUGE leap for many folks. People don’t want to eat shit, but gee, nutrition is pretty good nowadays. Have you SEEN the SIZE of the feet on sixteen-year-old girls?

I didn’t deduct the points because this book isn’t so new, and perhaps the Michael Pollan-esque message was a bit fresher then.

Buford scores because he makes it fun instead of holier-than-thou. You won’t forget the Tuscan butchers he trains with in a hurry, either.(less)

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Jun 10, 2011 Adam Woods rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone

Recommended to Adam by: Anthony Bourdain

Ok, So if you know me you've probably heard me tell you about this book. I've probably read you a passage, or possibly even a few pages (if you've been really patient with me). This book answers that question you ask yourself every time you meet someone really cool, who does something really awesome, "What would it be like to work with them? To learn what they know, do what they do?"

Bill Buford does that. He starts off as a Kitchen Slave in Mario Batali's kitchen. He learns all of those kitchen...more

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Feb 21, 2010 Moira Burke rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Bill Buford likes to surround himself with histrionic people, whose antics frequently cross the line into violence. First, it was the soccer hooligans. Now it's three-star NY chef Mario Batali and Italian butcher Dario Cecchini. You can imagine Buford and Batali, into their fifth bottle of wine in a dim New York hot spot at three in the morning, Buford regaling the imbecilic escapades of the Man United fans in the eighties, and Batali savoring (and interrupting) every detail. Not content with h...more "Bill Buford likes to surround himself with histrionic people, whose antics frequently cross the line into violence. First, it was the soccer hooligans. Now it's three-star NY chef Mario Batali and Italian butcher Dario Cecchini. You can imagine Buford and Batali, into their fifth bottle of wine in a dim New York hot spot at three in the morning, Buford regaling the imbecilic escapades of the Man United fans in the eighties, and Batali savoring (and interrupting) every detail. Not content with his job as New Yorker fiction editor, Buford abandons his day job to be a kitchen slave in Babbo and later an apprentice to a pasta maker and a butcher in Italy. An excellent read for foodies. Selected quotes:

Chicken feet are a vivid sight--like human hands without a thumb, curled up and knuckly--and the first time I saw them, bobbing in their giant vat, they looked as though they were attached to the arms of so many people, clawing at the churning water; trying to climb out, the bubbling pot a portal from Hell, there in the back of the kitchen, against the wall, the hottest place.

The burden was in the fact that the polenta was never made first thing. It was always the seventh or eighth thing. So if you got busy and forgot--if suddenly, at four-thirty, you found yourself saying, \""Oh shit, the polenta!\""--you were in trouble. You can't crush three hours of slow cooking into sixty minutes. For emergencies, a box of the instant was hidden on the top shelf of the walk-in, but to use it was considered a failure of character. It also rendered Frankie apoplectic, who took these lapses as personal slights. \""You're doing this to humiliate me,\"" he'd say to whoever he'd just spotted, tiptoeing like a shoplifter, clandestinely slinking off with a box of the instant an hour before the service started. \""You're doing this to make me look bad. You're doing this because you know we will fucking lose our fucking three stars if we start serving fucking instant, and if we lose our fucking three stars I lose my fucking job.\""

One busy Saturday, Dario was serving a woman about to purchase her first bistecca who then asked him if the meat was good. \""E\buona?\"" Dario said, his voice rising theatrically with exaggerated indignation. \""Non lo so. Proviano\"" (I don't know--let's find out.) So he took a bite--the woman's raw purchase--chewed it melodramatically, swallowed, said, \""Yes, it's good,\"" wrapped it up, and gave the woman her change. The woman, aghast, took her package and fled. The consequence was that several people asked Dario if he would take a bite out of their steaks as well-as though his teeth marks were an autograph. \""Please,\"" one man said, \""it's for my wife.\""

"""(less)

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Feb 12, 2010 Margaret rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-books

A terrific reading of a hugely entertaining book. The very long title pretty much summarizes the gist: Mr. Buford, a writer and editor, finagles a job working in Chef Mario Batali's NYC restaurant, Babbo, starting as lowly, brow-beaten kitchen prep, and proceeds, without any real ambition, to work his way up, somewhat, in the kitchen hierarchy. This stretch of the book will be familiar to anyone who has read Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential," both in terms of restaurant and cooking detai...more

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Dec 02, 2009 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

My method of choosing a new book in a bookstore is always the same. I find a book I think I might be interested in, and then I start reading the first sentence. If I am drawn in, I will continue on and finish the first paragraph, and the few instances where I am still captivated, I will continue reading the first page and maybe even the 2nd and 3rd. If I get to this point, I know the book is a keeper. With Heat, I knew I was going to like it after the first sentence.

The author Bill Buford, a ver...more

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Nov 11, 2009 Jhoanna rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: cheery-reading, you-need-to-buy-this-book

It's official: I'm jealous as hell of Bill Buford. Not only did he get to pursue a passion of his (cooking) with the unbridled enthusiasm of a five-year-old, but he makes a damn good story of this pursuit. I found this book in the discount section of my local bookstore and had to buy it after these opening sentences:

"The first glimpse I had of what Mario Batali's friends had described to me as the "myth of Mario" was on a cold Saturday night in January 2002, when I invited him to a birthday dinn...more

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Sep 30, 2009 Christin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Let me preface this review with a disclaimer, I am not a foodie; I am an eater. My only interest in food typically is how it tastes, not its journey from field to slaughterhouse to restaurant to the particulars of preparation to my plate to my stomach, but Buford might have changed my perspective. His literary-historical perspective on Tuscan food, his wild, uproarious tales from the life of Mario Batali and the Babbo kitchen, and his engaging portraits of food culture in Italia, were thoroughly...more

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Jun 14, 2009 Sean rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: food, non-fiction, biography

Overall an engaging and interesting read about one man's journey from amateur home cooking through the world of a three-star restaurant kitchen. It's also a musing of sorts on food in general as he weaves in his own take on the slow food movement and brings up culinary history a bit (e.g., the history of the egg in pasta). Lastly it's a travelogue/memoir. In spite of it taking on a lot of different styles, I found it to be well paced, contain very interesting characters, and possess a storyline...more

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Jan 21, 2008 Alexa rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: food lovers

Shelves: give-up-your-job-and-get-a-new-life, food

This book made me laugh so hard. Bill Buford has an incredible way of getting his story across so that you feel like you're in the room with him and Mario Batali and the crazy Italian butcher. More than that, it makes you want to be in the kitchen. At least, it makes me want to be in a kitchen but I love cooking and food so there you are. If you like food, this book is for you. You don't have to be a food snob or anything, just seriously like food. And like reading, of course.

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About Bill Buford

Bill Buford is an American author and journalist.
Buford is the author of the books:
Among the Thugs and Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany.

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“You can't do traditional work at a modern pace. Traditional work has traditional rhythms. You need calm. You can be busy, but you must remain calm.” — 3 people liked it

“You don't learn knife skills at cooking school, because they give you only six onions and no matter how hard you focus on those six onions there are only six, and you're not going to learn as much as when you cut up a hundred.” — 2 people liked it

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title link	preview: Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/139220.Heat?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320554917l/139220.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/139220.Heat?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford[/url]

Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany

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