Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker and Apprentice to a Butc

Yes, that's right, I finished the book.

Let me start out by saying that I think it’s a safe assumption that I think about food more than the average person. I am the opposite of the saying “Don’t live to eat, eat to live.” Most days, I live to eat. So it goes without saying that I was thrilled to pick up a book completely about Italian food and one man’s (seriously awesome) journey learning as much about it as possible by working in a NYC kitchen with one of the most renowned chefs and from the people who know it best – Italians.

I began this book more excited to read about Mario Batali -a personal Food Network hero- than anything, but found that my favorite section was the one in which Buford details his experience with Italy’s most well known butcher (oddly enough, as I’m opposed to eating meat), Dario Cecchini. I found that there is a place in this world where people truly take care and are even passionate about where their meat comes from, how the animal lived, what the animal ate, and so on. I appreciated this thought on meat as well: “People don’t think of an animal when they use the word; they think of an abstraction; they think of an element in a meal. (“What I want tonight is a cheeseburger!”)…To my mind, vegetarians are among the few people who actually think about meat – at least they know what it is.”

If you are interested in learning about the history of Italian food, but from a completely unique and privileged experience, look no further. But be prepared to read about what I consider some pretty repulsive stuff. For example, “Culatello translates loosely as ‘buttness’ and is made from the hindquarters of a pig – boned, stuffed into a bladder, cured, and hung for two years in the damp local cellars. The method is deemed unmodern by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and culatello is forbidden in America.” Sick.

I gave the book four stars because I felt as though it wasn’t completely focused at times. Buford details so many staff members, friends, teachers, and so on that I just felt scatterbrained half the time. I eventually stopped trying to remember who most of the people were and paid more attention to the accounts of the people and their experiences, not who they themselves were.

And while I did find this book pretentious at times, (i.e., “His tortellini were made with a veal and capon filling – bovine and fowl, and unmodern pairing, and one I associate with the meats you find in a Bolognese ragu.” Groooaaan) the insight into a few once in a lifetime opportunities of working with some of the most highly regarded people in terms of culinary preparation and tradition was the redeeming factor. If anything, this book will give those Italian-Americans who are obsessed with being Italian, yet can only speak to the knowledge of their “big families” and “grandma’s amazing cooking,” something more to talk about. I think we all know people like this and all can agree that it’s more than aggravating.

But the bottom line is this: I’m not really a food snob. While this guy’s experiences were incredible, I personally don’t know anyone who could relate to the author. I love good food, but I also like Taco Bell. As expected when reading something of this nature, it made me feel like if I purchased pasta anywhere other than from some obscure pasta-maker from the hillside in Porretta, Italy, I shouldn’t eat pasta at all. And I just can’t do that.

Most food writing is shit. It wallows in superlatives as brazenly as real estate hustings. But really good writing about food makes the heart soar.

This is in the second category. Partially because Buford is so craven, so desperate to GET what it is like being young, dumb and full of come in a kitchen more stuffed with wise-asses and borderline personality disorders than the average martini olive.

Lots of guys take up lycra and the bike for their mid-life thingo. Or get expensive mistresses. Or foreign cars (the same thing, really). Buford rather sadly wants to cut it on the line in a four star restaurant. He is known as “kitchen bitch”.

Happily for the reader, as a long-time food obsessed New Yorker staff writer with serious “chops” (sorry) in the descriptive department, it’s a pretty great ride for the reader.

Things I learnt from Bill Buford:
1.Mario Batali is deeply unlikeable.
2.Kitchens are the most unreconstructed misogynist bastions imaginable. Still.
3.Italians love a gesture. The thing that makes it ineffably charming, which gives it gravitas, is that they LIVE by such gestures. Even if it makes their lives in some ways suck.

I was tempted to deduct points from Buford’s giant schwing (sentimental and gee whiz all at the same time which is some feat for an erection) for artisanal production. YES, food made by hand is better. YES, frankenstein food production is a truly terrible side-effect of globalisation. But I’ve heard it a lot. And it doesn’t explain how in reality non-yuppies in urban settings can readily afford organic/local meats and produce. Other than to grown it, which is a HUGE leap for many folks. People don’t want to eat shit, but gee, nutrition is pretty good nowadays. Have you SEEN the SIZE of the feet on sixteen-year-old girls?

I didn’t deduct the points because this book isn’t so new, and perhaps the Michael Pollan-esque message was a bit fresher then.

Buford scores because he makes it fun instead of holier-than-thou. You won’t forget the Tuscan butchers he trains with in a hurry, either.

I enjoyed this book because I like reading about food and restaurants. However, I think the book would’ve benefited from focusing on his time with Batali and in the Babbo kitchen specifically. The second half of the book that takes place in Italy was interesting but I found myself wishing for less history and more cooking.

He's so funny and so enthusiastic and so deluded--so human. It really is fascinating to see the lengths people will go for their passion, if they can. This is pulls the curtain back at bit from professional chef-ery, and restaurant cooking in general. For the few that make it big, there are millions who slave in the heat...I don't think I will ever forget the polenta anecdote.

like a new yorker article that goes on way too long. i couldn't finish it.

i got this to read on the airplane, and it did an admirable job for that precise purpose. but there's one thing that's a real problem for this book. About halfway through, he ends a chapter saying he has to leave New York to deal with "personal demons." Fine. But he never mentions what they are/ were. And the book is all under the guise of a kind of memoir. If he's not going to tell the reader what those demons are, don't use it as a cliffhanger/ enticement to keep reading. Not only is it supremely annoying, but it detracts and distracts from the rest of the book. What the hell kind of editor would let that in anyway: "Hey, why don't you leave a tease in there about your personal life, and then never come back to it? I'm sure the reader would love that! Especially since they're probably reading this book more to find out about food than you! So why not get the interested in your life for 5 seconds." Assholes.

episodic but unified. zippy and makes you want to get on the line... or at least get up and start some Italian home cooking of your own -he says as he starts making pasta-

Ugh, amazing. Buford is a great writer. Just the language is seamless and subtle and doesn't betray a lot of the mechanics and transitions. He does make the occasional mistake (sometimes repeating himself, mangled chronological sleight of hand, and the transition into "Apprentice" illustrates the importance of word choice, "personal demons" to mean his obsession with butchery and not family issues) a little more noticeable, but who cares.

The structure astutely uses the mantra: form follows function. Heat's function or purpose is Buford. The point is to follow Buford's quixotic journey into food. The structure follows Buford's research and journey. We start with Batali and Batali's history, using clearly delineated history as we chart both Batali's and Buford's kitchen trials. The two are not directly paralleled and Buford mainly uses the comparison to poke fun at himself. As Buford establishes himself in the kitchen, Buford quiets the history on Batali and eventually Batali all but disappears and Buford steps to the fore.
The point is not Batali. He's the hook, but not the point.

Heat is a great example of creative nonfiction in its use of characters. The characters feel made-up, they have a depth and a roundness that makes you think he thought them up, but instead Buford has selected details to make us see them as round characters. I particularly loved Andy, Caesar, and the Maestro, characters that say more through absence and silence.

Heat has great tension between his status as not an outsider and not an insider. This tension follows through in the tone, which is a delicate mix between detachment and intimacy. Buford succeeds at this precarious mix mainly through his wry sense of humor, most of it directed at his own ineptitude. Here, Buford's technique is more noticeable than elsewhere, but it is an effective usage. He uses a lot of nonrestrictive clauses in his syntax. He has his own loosely codified system of rules for these nonrestrictive clauses--quotes go in parentheses, comedic asides in dashes, and loose "voice" asides in commas. Oftentimes a lot of nonrestrictive clauses can lead to some difficulty reading because the sentences become so long, but the wry humor helps Buford combat this tendency.

In many ways I think Heat is about the cult of foodie culture. Buford is very aware of the inconsistencies and impracticalities inherent in it even as he talks up the Pollan myth (organic, slow food, locavore, etc.). He starts with the cult of the chef to draw in the reader. Batali is great for this because he is such a personality, but the reader sees the production side of things and gets to see "behind the curtain." I was particularly fascinated by the anecdote of Batali preparing easy fan-interactions he could pull out when someone recognized him after his first fan was disappointed in his normalcy. This section ends with the equally fascinated discussion of the Food Network and its move away from Mario, away from personality and into presentation and food porn. Then, Buford moves on to the cult of authenticity, or the idea that the best of anything is only available at the source. So Buford travels to Italy to study pasta-making with Miriam. Lastly, Buford ends with the cult of ingredient. In his case, meat. He makes a sizable error in calling his obsession with meat a "personal demon." This section bookends an interesting discussion of the "inter-office" squabbles of a top tier New York kitchen so to cut it right off at what might seem like the most dramatic point was an interesting decision (a mistake I would say). Also, calling it a "personal demon" brings up the specter of alcoholism and drug abuse, not meat addiction, but I can't help, but love this section for its characters.

As Buford goes deeper and deeper into his quixotic quest to become an "artisan" butcher, we reach the ne plus ultra of this insider/outsider tension. Buford is now physically 100% in the Maestro's world, but mentally he begins to inch out, and we as the reader begin to ask, "What is the point of this? Does Buford want to be a butcher? Open a restaurant?" This moment is important because the answer is of course something along the lines of he wants to do all these things AND write a book about it. Buford toes the line and doesn't make me question his intellectual curiosity and honesty. He underlines this point with the story of Batali's night out, where Batali point blank asks him if he wants to open a restaurant. Buford's answer validates the position of the "amateur" in foodie culture.