Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-maker and Apprentice to a Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford (2.5 stars)

In Heat, Buford provides an interesting insight into life in a 3-star restaurant in Manhattan, and takes in a variety of prima-donna celebrity chefs and crazy kitchen characters.  The book begins with the author becoming a kitchen slave in Babbo, an Italian restaurant owned by Mario Batali.  Batali is one of the most famous chefs in the US: he had his own show Malto Mario on the food network, and was one of the regular competitors on Iron Chef America.

You first get a taste for the craziness that is to come when Buford describes the behaviour of Marco Pierre White, one of Batali's mentors:

Patrons ("fat ugly bastards") who ordered meat well done were an insult to the kitchen, and on two occasions Marco ordered them to leave his restaurant before they completed their meals...When someone ordered fried potatoes he was so insulted he prepared them himself and charged five hundred dollars.

Buford struggles with the heat and stress of the kitchen, injures himself fairly frequently, and comes home with hands so stinky that even after the Lady Macbeth treatment their odour wakes up his wife like smelling salts.

I found this early part of the book interesting, but it lost my attention as the author began to wander down some fairly boring paths.  I really don't care exactly when people starting using eggs to make pasta, and Buford's hunt through 15th and 16th century cookbooks was tedious.

I thought the book finished strongly with the mad Tuscan butcher Dario Cecchini, who is the craziest and most interesting character Buford encounters.  I loved the descriptions of him dining in restaurants and blasting chefs for not sticking to the Tuscan letter of the law:

"What in the name of my testicles," he said finally, in a low, controlled voice, "is this dish on the menu?"

and his general attitude towards customers that deviates from the standard 'the customer is always right':

Dario followed a much blunter, take-no-prisoners philosophy that actually the customer is a dick.

I thought Buford did a reasonable job of writing a food book without making a verbal recipe book, but it failed to hold my attention for a significant portion of the story.

2.5 stars.