Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
Bill Buford's funny and engaging bookHeatoffers readers a rare glimpse behind the scenes in Mario Batali's kitchen. Who better to review the book for Amazon.com, than Anthony Bourdain, the man who first introduced readers to the  wide array of lusty and colorful characters in the restaurant business? We asked Anthony Bourdain to readHeatand give us his take. We loved it. So did he. Check out his review below.--Daphne DurhamGuest Reviewer: Anthony BourdainAnthony Bourdain is host of the Discovery Channel'sNo Reservations, executive chef at Les Halles in Manhattan, and author of the bestselling and groundbreakingKitchen Confidential,Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook,A Cook's Tour,Bone in the Throat, and many others. His latest book,The Nasty Bitswill be released on May 16, 2006.Heatis a remarkable work on a number of fronts--and for a number of reasons. First, watching the author, an untrained, inexperienced and middle-aged desk jockey slowly transform into not just a useful line cook--but an extraordinarily knowledgable one is pure pleasure. That he chooses to do so primarily in the notoriously difficult, cramped kitchens of New York's three starBabboprovides further sado-masochistic fun. Buford not only accurately and hilariously describes the painfully acquired techniques of the professional cook (and his own humiations), but chronicles as well the mental changes--the "kitchen awareness" and peculiar world view necessary to the kitchen dweller. By end of book, he's even talking like a line cook.Secondly, the book is a long overdue portrait of the realMario Bataliand of the realMarco Pierre White--two complicated and brilliant chefs whose coverage in the press--while appropriately fawning--has never described them in their fully debauched, delightful glory. Buford has--for the first time--managed to explain White's peculiar--almost freakish brilliance--while humanizing a man known for terrorizing cooks, customers (and Batali). As for Mario--he is finally revealed for the Falstaffian, larger than life, mercurial, frighteningly intelligent chef/enterpreneur he really is. No small accomplishment. Other cooks, chefs, butchers, artisans and restaurant lifers are described with similar insight.Thirdly,Heatreveals a dead-on understanding--rare among non-chef writers--of the pleasures of "making" food; the real human cost, the real requirements and the real adrenelin-rush-inducing pleasures of cranking out hundreds of high quality meals. One is left with a truly unique appreciation of not only what is truly good about food--but as importantly, who cooks--and why.  I can't think of another book which takes such an unsparing, uncompromising and ultimately thrilling look at the quest for culinary excellence.Heatbrims with fascinating observations on cooking, incredible characters, useful discourse and argument-ending arcania. I read my copy and immediately started reading it again. It's going right in between Orwell'sDown and Out in Paris and Londonand Zola'sThe Belly of Parison my bookshelf.--Anthony Bourdain