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A review by danielmbensen
The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection by Michael Ruhlman
5.0
a surprisingly powerful meditation on art, craft, and perfectionism
Michael Ruhlman strikes me as a journalist who wants to be a chef. He hangs out at the Culinary Institute of America, watching the Certified Master Chef exam, then hangs out some more in the kitchens of Michael Symon and Thomas Keller. He loves telling the reader about fancy French methods of food-preparation, and even though I will never use them, I enjoyed listening. There's valuable "what's it like to be a chef" scenes, as if we're watching a camera hidden in a kitchen. I also appreciate Ruhlman's commitment to the hard questions like "what's the point of being a Certified Master Chef?" "Why pay so much for food?" and best of all "why work so hard?" I was surprised by how deep we went. There's real insight here.
Michael Ruhlman strikes me as a journalist who wants to be a chef. He hangs out at the Culinary Institute of America, watching the Certified Master Chef exam, then hangs out some more in the kitchens of Michael Symon and Thomas Keller. He loves telling the reader about fancy French methods of food-preparation, and even though I will never use them, I enjoyed listening. There's valuable "what's it like to be a chef" scenes, as if we're watching a camera hidden in a kitchen. I also appreciate Ruhlman's commitment to the hard questions like "what's the point of being a Certified Master Chef?" "Why pay so much for food?" and best of all "why work so hard?" I was surprised by how deep we went. There's real insight here.