A review by bookben40
Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford

funny informative inspiring lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

4.0

Bill Buford writes like a barkeeper with a Ivy League English degree: evocate and precise while being honest and gritty. This is his style, and it works especially well with cooking, which is in many senses analogous. Buford's style and his ability to illuminate season this work, and the characters in it area alive and real. The descriptions of food are also vivid, especially the ones that involve grisly bits or flesh. I appreciate the broad range of this work, and found it to move smoothly between lively restaurant scenes and contemplative reflections on the philosophy and history of food. The latter at times can be lengthy and indulgent, but they do not largely alter the reading experience. This book has a veritable stock of antecdoes and lessons on cooking and the restaurant world. Here are a few of the more memorable ones: 
-Cooking can be deeply intimate and sexual, in part due to the encompassing heat and intensity of the kitchen. 
-The difference between restaurant and home cooking is consistency-restaurants must be consistent.
-Even the best restaurant kitchens fade during the evening hours, especially near the end of the day. This is also true of pasta water, which is used throughout the day and is therefore grimy by close.
-Feeling, literally with the fingers, is a critical diagnostic, especially with meat. 
-Cooking is of a place, but also of a time.
-Some chefs are artisans, others are businessmen. 
-Tradition is hard to find - even places that seem traditional are often not, and the pursuit of uncorrupted tradition is a battle against the clock.
-Good cooking takes practice, and time. Having a good teacher helps.
-The idea of small food-this is his concluding theory but I don't find it that hepful.
-The scale of food is huge, and impressive. 
-Reviews matter a lot for high-scale restaurants, especially in NYC where the Times is the only highbrow paper.
-Pig is simple, cow is hard.
-There's an extensive history of food literature.
-The best meat is often found in places with simpler economies, because the link between human and animal is closer.

Overall, this was a wonderful read and one that made me want to cook and return to Italy.