Heat

I normally don't have the time to read books. Most of my time is spent with the significant other, work, martial arts, and hanging with the dudes. Whatever free time I have to myself, I usually like to vegetate and watch some food shows or shows about martial arts. However, since we were flying out to the Bay Area, I bought a book called Heat by Bill Buford based on Mr. Risotto's recommendation. Phenomenal book.

Heat documents Bill's time at Babbo. He was previously an editor (and terrible cook) at the New Yorker, but he took 1 1/2 years off to work at Babbo and then subsequently trained with a famous butcher in Tuscany. The book is very easy to read and great for those short on time - some sections are only 2 pages long.

It also gives a great insight on the true Mario Batali, not the fun/loveable Food Network icon. With that huge personality, you know he liked to par-tay and this book documents his voracious appetite for food, drink, drugs (doing coke off of a pizza pan), and women. It also shows that he doesn't know what's going on in his kitchen. When they were opening up Otto, Mario obviously was never paying any attention to what was going on at Babbo. During that time, 5 of his top chefs quit, which may have explained my two mediocre experiences at Babbo since it was around 2003-2004. It seemed Mario's partner Joe Bastianich is the one that knows the ins and outs of their empire. Joe was the one that actually gave the go ahead on the new head chef at Babbo, not Mario.

Love Mario as a teacher of la cucina italiana and he's probably cool to party with, but I will never go to any of his restaurants again. He doesn't have a handle on his kitchen and the fact that he opens up restaurants every other day means it's not going to get better. However, with that being said, Heat is a great book and highly recommended and I'm already looking for my next food related book.

A great excerpt describing a break during Mario's ex-Food Network show Molto Mario - enjoy:
"Finally, there's a break (Whew!), and you can relax, except that Mario pent up by the effort to present a wholesome version of himself lets loose with everything he's kept contained, an anarchic spilling out of naughtiness, involving whatever food item is to hand: like an artichoke ("Because it gives me so much wood") or cobra meat ("because it gives me even more wood than an artichoke, big wood, strong like-a-tree wood," whereupon he embraces two female prep cooks bearishly and invites them to imagine they're in a post-cobra-eating circle, "deeply satisfied.")