No Experience Necessary: The Culinary Odyssey of Chef Norman Van Aken
This is not your mother’s cookbook, and it’s not truly a cookbook, at that, although recipes are slapped in as palate cleansers between restaurant-themed chapters detailing chef and cookbook author Van Aken’s escapades. Yet this might just be the book to hand to nearly every raffish, wanna-be-something male in sight—a rowdy, fist-pumped-in-the-air memoir of a guy who found his way chopping, dicing, and wreaking havoc. Van Aken’s story starts in the 1970s, so there’s hitchhiking, Volkswagens needing push starts, and fired-up grills (and girls) around every corner. Though his kitchen mates tend to serve f-bombs with every meal, Van Aken seems like a pretty good guy, gamely trying his hand at many non-food-related jobs, marrying the young lady he truly loved, and his enthusiasm for his life is evident in every exclamation point. Like Forrest Gump with a carving knife, the chef serves up tales of hearing Jimmy Buffett in a little Key West dive, ­partying at Tennessee Williams’ house, and more, all in an era before celebrity chefs truly sprouted. Come and get it while it’s hot—bad language, good times, fine dining. --Eloise Kinney