The kitchen. The place where magic is made. Dedicated Chefs work tireless to creative culinary masterpieces for you to eat. Delicious dishes like this one: A roasted chicken served over mushroom pappardelle – as served to me recently in Napa Valley…

This is the best of the kitchen, and there is nothing more fulfilling that seeing a Master Chef at work…

There is, however, a dark side to food as well…and that is what am going to focus on with these great books about food! We start with acclaimed French Chef Bernard Loiseau…

Burgundy Stars by William Echikson – 1995
The Perfectionist Life and Death in Haute Cuisine by Rudolph Chelminski – 2006. A powerful double bill about the dark side of being a Chef.

I bought the book “Burgundy Stars” in 1995, excited to read how a Chef turned his restaurant into a 3-star Michelin destination. It is a terrific account with a very dark shadow stretched across each page.

Here is how Amazon describes Burgundy Stars: “What does it mean to receive a three-star restaurant rating in the Michelin Guide? To Bernard Loiseau, chef-owner of La Cote d’Or in Saulieu, France, it means everything. His bid for the third star is the story behind veteran journalist Echikson’s 12-month account of this famed Burgundy restaurant.”

Then, in 2003 was this tragic story: “One of France’s most celebrated chefs has apparently committed suicide after his flagship restaurant was downgraded in a top restaurant guide.Bernard Loiseau was found dead at his country home, a hunting rifle by his side. His death came a week after the renowned GaultMillau restaurant guide cut its rating for his Cote d’Or restaurant in Burgundy.”

“I think GaultMillau killed him. When you are leader of the pack and all of a sudden they cut you down, it’s hard to understand, it hit him hard,” restaurateur and friend Paul Bocuse said.

Out of this tragedy came another terrific book – one that focused on the intense pressure Chefs are under, especially in France, to achieve three-star status.

The Perfectionist

Bernard Loiseau was one of only twenty-five French chefs to hold Europe’s highest culinary award, three stars in the Michelin Red Guide, and only the second chef to be personally awarded the Legion of Honor by a head of state. Despite such triumphs, he shocked the culinary world by taking his own life in February 2003. The GaultMillau guidebook had recently dropped its ratings of Loiseau’s restaurant, and rumors swirled that he was on the verge of losing a Michelin star (a prediction that proved to be inaccurate).

Journalist Rudolph Chelminski, who befriended Loiseau three decades ago and followed his rise to the pinnacle of French restaurateurs, now gives us a rare tour of this hallowed culinary realm. The Perfectionist is the story of a daydreaming teenager who worked his way up from complete obscurity to owning three famous restaurants in Paris and rebuilding La Côte d’Or, transforming a century-old inn and restaurant that had lost all of its Michelin stars into a luxurious destination restaurant and hotel. He started a line of culinary products with his name on them, appeared regularly on television and in the press, and had a beautiful, intelligent wife and three young children he adored—Bernard Loiseau seemed to have it all.

An unvarnished glimpse inside an echelon filled with competition, culture wars, and impossibly high standards, The Perfectionist vividly depicts a man whose energy and enthusiasm won the hearts of staff and clientele, while self-doubt and cut-throat critics took their toll.

This is a terrific book, sad but necessary to finish the story that “Burgundy Stars” only began to tell.

The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness and the Making of a Great Chef by Marco Pierre White

Everyone knows Gordon Ramsey as the foul-mouthed taskmaster Chef – pushing everyone in his kitchen to excel…but did you ever wonder where he learned this behavior? Well, wonder no more!

From his own website: Marco Pierre White began his training in the kitchen at the Hotel St George in Harrogate, North Yorkshire and later at the Box Tree in Ilkley, West Yorkshire. Arriving in London as a 16-year-old with “£7.36, a box of books and a bag of clothes” he began his classical training as a commis under Albert Roux and Michel Roux at Le Gavroche, a period that would lead Albert to describe him as “my little bunny”.

At 24, Marco became Head Chef and joint owner of Harveys with a kitchen staff that included the young Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal.

By the age of 33, Marco Pierre White had become the youngest chef to be awarded three Michelin stars (This record is now held by the Italian Massimiliano Alajmo, who won three stars at the age of 28 in 2002.)

During these years White had working for him Gordon Ramsay, Eric Chavot (The Capital), Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck), Bryn Williams (Odette’s), Matt Tebbutt (The Foxhunter), Robert Reid, Thierry Busset, Jason Atherton, James Stocks and in front of house Max (Mark) Palmer, one of the few English Maître d’ of a Michelin 3-star, Claude Douart, Philippe Messy (youngest sommelier to gain 3 Michelin stars) and Chris Jones, unusual in being an English sommelier in a 2-star Michelin French restaurant at the age of 21.

Impressive, right? Sure, until you read the book and find out he’s a madman! This is one wild ride of a story – as Anthony Bourdain says on the back cover, “Marco Pierre White was the original rock star Chef., the guy who all of us wanted to be.” I mean, just the title of this memoir tells you what to expect, and it delivers a ton of great anecdotes and escapades.

But even with all of that, it is a book about food, and the love of food. Oh, and CRAZY STORIES!

California Dish : What I Saw (and Cooked) at the American Culinary Revolution by Jeremiah Tower

Widely recognized as the godfather of modern American cooking and a mentor to such rising celebrity chefs as Mario Batali, Jeremiah Tower is one of the most influential cooks of the last thirty years. Now, the former chef and partner at Chez Panisse and the genius behind Stars San Francisco tells the story of his lifelong love affair with food — an affair that helped to spark an international culinary revolution.

This book is not only full of great stories about the creation of California cuisine, Tower takes some time to “tell tales out of school” as it were…and about some very big names.

This is a great example of a memoir about food that also dishes ALOT – Tower takes the time to settle scores and name names – and it helps you understand that there are some super-sized personalities in the kitchen…

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Scholosser.

In many ways, this is the first “journalistic investigation” of food, and certainly the most influential in how we think about the preparation and service of food in America.

From Amazon: Fast food has hastened the “mall-ing” of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled American cultural imperialism abroad. That’s a lengthy list of charges, but here Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.

Schlosser’s myth-shattering survey stretches from California’s subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many fast food’s flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths — from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate. He also uncovers the fast food chains’ disturbing efforts to reel in the youngest, most susceptible consumers even while they hone their institutionalized exploitation of teenagers and minorities.

Kitchen Confidential – Adventures In The Culinary Underbelly And then, there is Anthony Bourdain. In the year 2000, Bourdain blew the doors off of food writing with his biting, hysterical and cautionary tale of a young Chef with a Poterhouse-sized chip on his shoulder.

As Amazon says: “When Chef Anthony Bourdain wrote “Don’t Eat Before You Read This” in The New Yorker, he spared no one’s appetite, revealing what goes on behind the kitchen door. In Kitchen Confidential, he expanded that appetizer into a deliciously funny, delectable shocking banquet that lays out his 25 years of sex, drugs, and haute cuisine.

From his first oyster in the Gironde to the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, from the restaurants of Tokyo to the drug dealers of the East Village, from the mobsters to the rats, Bourdain’s brilliantly written, wild-but-true tales make the belly ache with laughter.”

Alot of people don’t realize that Bourdain was a novelist before he published “Kitchen Confidential” – and his myriad of books and TV Shows since show that he loves food, and he loves to bring it down to size as needed.

I know a few celebrated Chefs who are huge fans – and I know a few who are NOT. At the end of the day, hgis honestly and unflinching critique of the food industry is honest, brutal, and yes, he points the pen at himself as well. One of the best chapters in his latest book “Medium Raw”, looks at how Bourdain failed to excel as a master Chef, taking the easy way out instead of reaching for the gastronomic heights of other Master Chefs. It’s a great read, they all are, but this is where it all began.

And don’t forget, Fox tried to turn this book into a TV sitcom starring Bradley Cooper, pre-“Hangover”!

One more post to come, but please let me know what you think!

Categories: Food, Recipes, Travel, Uncategorized

Tags: bernard loiseau, celebrated chefs, Chefs, culinary masterpieces, flagship restaurant