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May 15, 2008

Valerie rated it:

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 More...

3 comments like (9 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Kim rated it:

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 t More...

4 comments like (9 people liked it)

Oct 05, 2007

Amanda rated it:

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 More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Apr 24, 2007

Jenny rated it:

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 bel More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Andrew rated it:

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 More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Mar 24, 2009

Catherine rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 25, 2009

Rebecca rated it:

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 More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 14, 2008

Lindsay rated it:

I decided to check out yet another foodie book as a hangover from my recent obsession with Anthony Bourdain. Bill Buford, a relatively well-mannered, even professorial, alternative to the mayhem of Bourdain's prose, entertained me just as much as any drug-related, profanity-laced anecdote in my beloved Kitchen Confidential. I was entranced by Buford's transformation from urbane New Yorker editor to kitchen slave under the oversight of celebrity chef Mario Batali. Soon, Buford is slicing his f More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 02, 2011

Tom rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 14, 2008

Carol rated it:

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 a More...

6 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 08, 2010

Siobhan rated it:

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 More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 04, 2007

Sean rated it:

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" More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 31, 2009

Laurel rated it:

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 Val More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 07, 2007

Annika rated it:

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 se More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 27, 2007

Jean rated it:

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. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 08, 2007

Jennifer rated it:

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. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 08, 2011

Christine added it

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 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 me

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Jan 09, 2012

Sarah rated it:

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...

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Dec 22, 2011

Anna rated it:

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 expensi More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jun 10, 2011

Adam rated it:

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 lea More...

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Feb 21, 2010

Moira rated it:

"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 conte More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 12, 2010

Margaret rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 02, 2009

Matt rated it:

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 aut More...

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Nov 11, 2009

Jhoanna rated it:

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 More...

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Sep 30, 2009

Christin rated it:

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 thoroug More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jun 14, 2009

Sean rated it:

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 storyli More...

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Jan 21, 2008

Alexa rated it:

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.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 02, 2012

Robin rated it:

THIS IS A FAVORITE!!

I read this book on vacation and it completely altered my state of mind! I was transported into the world of a commercial kitchen, and then to Italy for historic preparation of handmade pasta. Bill Buford is a delightful author, funny and a little insane.

Only two complaints about this book. First, I was disgusted when he went to work for a butcher and, in great detail, described his new expertise. I sped read through that chapter, but I've eaten primarily More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 07, 2010

Bryce rated it:

An interesting, inspiring, but ultimately uneven account of Bill Buford's culinary adventure.

This book is partly a memoir of master-chef Mario Batali, partly a history of Italian cooking, and partly a treaty on food philosophy. I think BB didn't know what he intended this book to be because he didn't know what he intended his personal journey to be. BB doesn't want to own a restaurant, become a professional chef, or give up his writer's life to become a butcher in Italy... he seems More...

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