Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I love cooking, books about cooking, chef's autobiographies, television shows about kitchens and cooks. If it's chef-restaurant related, even if it's not top-quality, I'll likely give it a chance and enjoy it on some level.
Spiced, the story of a New York pastry chef's rise from student to hugely successful, seemed a book right up my alley. Not only was the book going to take on the perspective of a woman in the kitchen, but it also was going to focus on desserts. Women and desserts famously don't get a lot of foodie respect. What would Dalia Jurgensen have to say for herself?
Well, honestly, nothing too surprising. The book seemed to cover a lot of the same ground of the hard work and burn marks that were covered better in books like Heat, or those by Michael Ruhlman. And guess what? Restaurant kitchens are full of sexism and hostility toward women.
The best part of the book was discovering how she learned the art of pastry and dessert making at Nobu,
and then built on that knowledge until she was able to create her own dessert menus that earned her national acclaim at restaurants she helped open.
The worst part of the book was the sexual talk that didn't seem to add to the story and seemed out of place.
Dalia had a lesbian affair with a waitress? So what? Another chef talked in graphic terms about his previous evening? Allrighty then. I am not sure why the out-of-the-blue sex talk bugged me, but I think it's because they didn't seem to add to the story and therefore struck a weirdly false note.
Maybe this isn't the best chef memoir ever. But certainly, if you have the food fascination that I have, you'll enjoy enough of the book to make it a worthwhile read.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Spiced: A Pastry Chef's True Stories of Trails by Fire, After-Hours Exploits, and What Really Goes on in the Kitchen
0 comments:
Post a Comment