A colorful vignette of New York’s cutthroat culinary scene by a qualified insider.
The executive chef of New York City’s posh Waverly Inn recounts his personal and professional trials and tribulations.
Co-founded by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, the Waverly is best known for its celebrity clientele and the throngs of paparazzi lurking outside the door. But the food cooked under DeLucie’s watchful eye holds its own against the restaurant’s often picky patrons. From the Inn’s famous hamburger and trademark truffle-coated mac and cheese, to the roasted carrots ordered daily by Karl Lagerfeld, DeLucie’s experience has been a study in improvisation and adaptation, much like his culinary education. The author was a self-described corporate drone when, at the age of 30, he decided to follow his Italian heritage into the kitchen. After taking cooking classes at the New School, DeLucie started preparing food at Dean & DeLuca and moved from restaurant to restaurant, rising from a lowly crouton-maker to poissonnerie, sous chef and finally executive chef. Along the way, his personal life often paid the price for the hectic schedule his culinary life demanded. His portraits of the unique personalities that inhabit the kitchen are delightful, and his emphasis on the teamwork and leadership required to run a successful restaurant is inspiring. Though there are celebrity-driven anecdotes sprinkled throughout the text, the story never becomes gossipy. Unfortunately, DeLucie’s own distinct palate and culinary inspirations sometimes get lost in the narrative—to its detriment, as his descriptions of the food are the most interesting passages.
A colorful vignette of New York’s cutthroat culinary scene by a qualified insider.Pub Date: May 12, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-157924-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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