A fine treat for food buffs, less snotty than Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential but just as revealing on how a fancy...
Fine dining, politics, and a host of strange characters meet in this engaging, behind-the-scenes look at one of New York’s hippest restaurants.
Daniel is a place both to be seen and to eat well, at a fabulous cost: “The average dinner cover, meaning the cost of a meal for one person, including beverages, but not including taxes and gratuities, is $184.” The experience, suggests restaurant reviewer, food historian, and novelist Brenner (Greetings from the Golden State, 2001, etc.), is worth every bit of the cost; one of the many virtues of her insider’s look at the workings of a grand restaurant is its explanation of how costly it is to keep such a place running. (Just keeping a decent wine cellar on hand is an expensive proposition: Daniel’s holdings are valued at $800,000—money, Brenner points out, that is tied up in inventory and not earning interest.) Writing with a flair for on-the-street reportage, the author conveys such details as squabbles between chefs and sous-chefs, the curious ways of customers, many of whom the floor and kitchen staff rightly despise for their whiny demands, and the extraordinary problems attendant at every turn in bringing pleasure to people by way of the plate. Brenner is also superb at context; her disquisition on the general decline in American fine arts and the concomitant rise in the “living arts” is worth the price of admission. Non-foodies may not appreciate the drama around which she organizes her narrative: chef/owner Daniel Boulud’s quest to recapture a coveted four-star rating that had been stripped away for hotly contested reasons. But those who revere food will find Brenner’s approach as riveting as a good mystery, and just as much fun.
A fine treat for food buffs, less snotty than Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential but just as revealing on how a fancy meal makes it way to the table.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60808-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
