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Jul 21, 2011

Noah rated it:

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 ma More...

13 comments like (45 people liked it)

Jan 03, 2012

S.Annelise rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (11 people liked it)

May 28, 2011

Nina rated it:

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9 comments like (26 people liked it)

Jan 07, 2012

Cassy rated it:

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.
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3 comments like (12 people liked it)

Jan 24, 2012

Jeanette rated it:

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 care More...

11 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 23, 2012

Judy rated it:

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 f More...

54 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 24, 2011

Mary rated it:

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 n More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

May 28, 2011

Cynthia rated it:

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 pain More...

1 comment like (21 people liked it)

May 18, 2011

Chris rated it:

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 pla More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Sep 25, 2011

RandomAnthony rated it:

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 i More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Nov 09, 2011

Lauren rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jun 05, 2011

Tracey rated it:

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 so More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Feb 20, 2012

katherine rated it:

I, like a lot of other people, wanted to like this book. But I ended up hating it and really disliking the author by the end. She may have been one of the original farm-to-field restaurants, but her scathing hatred for anyone who visits a farmer's market made me feel defensive and dismayed that she would just sweep this option for shopping off the table simply because everyone else is doing it now. Her perfect childhood was enviable, and her parents' awful breakup was terrible and I can see why More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 09, 2012

Happyreader rated it:

Blood, Bones, and Bitter would have been a better title. Her constant subterranean rage exhausted me. Great, she can cook and found a workaholic outlet to hide from all of her unexamined issues. She’s well into her forties and still angry with her mother for God knows what. The big complaint is that her parents divorced and abandoned her for a summer. Yet she was abandoned at her dad’s home and it’s her mom, the source of her love of food and cooking, whom she doesn’t speak with for 20 year More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Vicki rated it:

This is a really, really interesting book on at least 100 different levels. Chef Gabrielle Hamilton lays it all out there, through series of essays that are about her life, family and food. It's an absolutely luscious read -- so easy to see the images, to imagine the food. But it's rough. Not a single thing is hidden, no bad actions or poor choices are made more palatable for us.

Another reviewer said that by the end of this book, he had started to hate Hamilton as a person. I wi More...

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Jan 16, 2012

Marcia rated it:

An audio book for me, with the author doing the reading, always an interesting direction, I think, but the author was a solid B performer (that's a 2012 inflated B, by the way). While you couldn't tear me away from this book, and I kept quoting passages to my husband as I read it, like some other readers I found the first half of the book, the journey to becoming a chef and acquiring a restaurant, far more captivating than the second half. Once Chef Hamilton was a married mom/chef/restaurant o More...

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Jan 16, 2012

Xander rated it:

This was a lively, bawdy, fun and very well written account of a reluctant chef. The writing is tight, tart and terrifying. Here's a brief passage:

"Grand Central was fully alive with commuters clogging the escalators and shops and the concourses. I stood in a long but fast-moving line at a coffee place where the women in front and back of me ordered—with straight faces—drinks called double-skim half-decaf vanilla latte—and the young caffeinated barristas called these very same w More...

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Jan 08, 2012

Melissa rated it:

the fact that anthony bourdain called this the best chef memoir ever gave me pause. I find him more than somewhat despicable. Coarse, crude, unfeeling. So I wondered what might make this "the best" for him. I enjoyed the first third of the book but became increasingly disturbed by the second and third sections of the book. Where were any caring adults in Hamilton's adolescence? What happened to her mother? Why did she spurn her mother so when, by Hamilton's own accounts, she was a More...

1 comment like

Jan 07, 2012

Mary Lou rated it:

Blood, Bones & Butter is a remarkable memoir, well-written and most interesting. Gabrielle Hamilton has had a fascinating life and what she says about cooking is very informative. I definitely recommend it.

Hamilton’s life story alone is worth the read. The youngest in a family of five in rural Pennsylvania, her childhood is idyllic, if magical and rough: “We trespassed, drag raced, smoked, burgled, and vandalized. We got ringworm, broken bones, tetanus, concussions, stitches, and ivy More...

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Jan 04, 2012

Kristi rated it:

In this magnificent memoir, the author invites you to witness, from a front row seat, the formation of an imaginative and fearless chef.

This memoir is a hit first of all, because she is so darned likeable. I decided by page 25 that I’d love to add her to my group of best girl friends. She is fearless, irreverent, honest, pulls no punches, flawed, funny, expressive, dedicated, and hard working. Throughout the book, I feel like an invisible friend. First, a classmate cheering he More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 15, 2011

Sarah rated it:

Initially, I really liked this book. She is a sensory and evocative writer who, when describing her childhood, created a magical, tactile experience. She also has a very keen sense of herself. Even when she didn't know where she was going, she knew how she was going to get there and I admired her ability to be herself with out apology and without being melodramatic about it. As a reader, and as a woman trying to make her way in a male-dominated profession, her ease was my liberation.
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0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 20, 2011

Barbara rated it:

If all I had read was the last quarter of the book I would have given this four stars. I grumbled a little through the earlier chapters which were very interesting but kind of a downer and oddly written,I thought. But bang! The section where this chef/owner decides to fully describe life on the lower tip of Italy with her husband's family during summer vacation tied me to this book until I finished, breathlessly and reluctantly, a little later. I wanted everyone I knew to read it. There is n More...

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Nov 19, 2011

Emalee rated it:

I enjoyed primarily the stories of this chef growing up and her early years as a chef. She is a good writer and weaves the narrative well. Echoing many other people's criticism, the story slows when she spends many chapters on her marriage (and birth of 2 children) and its demise. I would have been more interested in more details on setting up and running her successful restaurant, Prune.

What came as a surprise to me, and was not apparent in the book jacket cover nor any of the revi More...

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Nov 18, 2011

Santos rated it:

I liked this book. What made it better is that it was so easy to jump into and during the stress of the semester at school it was a relief to read. The images that the author Gabrielle portrayed growing up and her adventurous travels was inspiring. Taking a train by yourself with little money and sleeping in various, seedy hostels by yourself? By yourself as a girl?? It's kind of amazing that she was able to do that and I think she could have written more about this particular period in her life More...

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Oct 24, 2011

Veggie rated it:

Being a Vegetarian, this book had to come highly recommended for me to even consider it; the inverted chicken head and bright red cover is hard to swallow. The book did not disappoint. I found it so well-written that it was hard to put down. Admittedly, this is a book for a cook, food enthusiast or one who enjoys a well-told tale of memoir. If you happen to consider yourself all three, as I do, delight will be yours.

Chef Hamilton pulls no punches in recanting her early exploits and h More...

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Oct 23, 2011

Lynh rated it:

Gabrielle Hamilton is one bad-ass bitch. I think she is a perfect example of what it means to be both well educated and then to hate what education has to come to mean at the same time - someone who embodies that Mark Twain quotation about never letting schooling interfere with your education. I love the part where her friend tells her that if you are working your ass off at something, watch out - that is likely what you will become good at doing.

This book is her, her raw heart ripped More...

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Oct 11, 2011

Deborah rated it:

I love reading about food, almost as much as I love eating food, so I devoured (ha!) this memoir by Gabrielle Hamilton, who is a chef and restaurant owner and also holds an MFA in Creative Writing.

Hamilton writes beautifully about food and feelings and her extraordinary experience and career path. So much of this book would be practically unbelievable in a novel, from the way in which Hamilton’s idyllic childhood falls apart when her parents split up and she and her brother are left al More...

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Sep 29, 2011

Corey rated it:

An excellent story to feed the soul of your inner gourmand. The scenes she creates with food, people and environment are rich and delicious. This warmth is contrasted with her own troubled youth and her search for meaning in the culinary world and the greater world at large. Despite her trucker mouth and mannerisms in the kitchen she writes beautifully: capturing a mood or feeling with a deep vocabulary that was surprising.

A good book overall and an exciting story. My only criticism i More...

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Sep 16, 2011

Jaclyn rated it:

Hamilton, the founder/owner of Prune in New York City, wrote this memoir around her experiences with food, but there’s a lot of other things happening in this book too. The publishers had the lucky fortune of a fawning quote from Anthony Bourdain about the book (“Magnificant. Simply the best memoir by a chef ever. Ever.”) and have successfully marketed Hamilton’s memoir as a kind of female-chef-written Kitchen Confidential.

I can see how they came to the conclusion that that was a good More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 29, 2011

Carrie rated it:

It must be said upfront, that as much as 52 loaves (not the same author, just that I read two food non fiction books this week) was about the earth, history, monks and God; this book is equally as much not about that.
Set largely in NY (and Italy!) it's a memoir about a cook/chef leaving home very young, working in a bar at 16, some hard living, and grad school, as she tries to find purpose in meaning in her life. Her eventual own restaurant and future family are a positive result, though More...

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