Well-written and fascinating, though its appeal may be limited to the terminally food-obsessed.
An insider’s look at the first two years of Per Se, Thomas Keller’s New York complement to his legendary Napa Valley restaurant, French Laundry.
“The secret to service is not servitude, but anticipating desire,” Damrosch learned. She was a novice when she scored a pre-opening interview with Chef Keller and landed a job as backserver, pouring water, serving bread, setting and clearing for each course, among other things. Soon she was on the fast track and in 2004 became Per Se’s first female captain, the person who greets diners, takes their orders, sells and serves the wine and presents the check at the end of the meal. Damrosch acknowledges that the delights she chronicles are not for the budget-conscious: Per Se’s tasting menus start at $250 per person, and at one point she mentions two brothers spending “their usual $20,000 on a few bottles.” In some justification of the steep cost, she notes that if four guests at one table each have different menus, this could mean 20 or so courses and close to 80 different dishes, and that Per Se’s menu and attention to detail have made it one of only five four-star restaurants in New York City. Mouthwatering descriptions of the exotic fare may persuade skeptics that it’s worth the money. Of the custard course, Damrosch writes, “My favorite, the deviled egg with a truffle ‘Pop-Tart,’ looked exactly like the picnic food and toaster treat except that the pastry was filled with a marmalade of Périgord truffles and drizzled with truffle frosting.” Other topics include the author’s romance with a sexy sommelier and the staff’s downtime activities: a late-night excursion to find the city’s best bone marrow, for instance, or a weekend spent at a Vermont dairy farm learning about cheese in order to better serve their customers.
Well-written and fascinating, though its appeal may be limited to the terminally food-obsessed.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-122814-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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