Becoming a Chef: With Recipes and Reflections From America's Leading Chefs » (Revised)

The updated edition of the book Julia Child called "a 'must' for aspiring chefs"-the James Beard Award-winning guide to one of today's hottest careers
With more and more chefs achieving celebrity status, interest in the exciting world of today's leading chefs is higher than ever. Essential reading for anyone who loves food, Becoming a Chef gives an entertaining and informative insider's look at this dynamic profession, going behind the scenes to look into some of the most celebrated restaurant kitchens across the nation. More than 60 leading chefs-including some of the newest up-and-coming-discuss the inspiration, effort, and quirks of fate that turned would-be painters, anthropologists, and football players into culinary artists.
Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page (both of New York, NY) are the authors of the bestselling titles Culinary Artistry, Dining Out, Chef's Night Out. Dornenburg has cooked professionally at Arcadia, Judson Grill, and March in New York City and Biba and the East Coast Grill in Boston. Page, the recipient of the 1997 Melitta Bentz Award for Women's Achievement, is a graduate of the Harvard Business School.

Library Journal

This book should be mandatory reading for anyone considering a restaurant career. Dornenburg and Page show what working in a kitchen is really like-forget those ideas of glamour and celebrity. They begin with a brief history of restaurants and notable chefs, then move on to cooking schools and/or apprenticing, getting a job ("starting at the bottom"), and developing in the field. There's a chapter on opening a restaurant and one each on maintaining your edge and surviving the bad times. The authors interviewed 60 chefs from across the country, and relevant, pithy quotations are interspersed through the text, giving a good overview of the different experiences possible. Recipes from the chefs at first seem superfluous, but in fact they serve to convey the varied styles of many distinctive cooks. Fun to read, informative, and unique, this is an essential purchase for career collections.-Judith Sutton, "Sutton's Place Cuisine," New York

Acknowledgments.

Foreword.

Preface.

CHEFS Yesterday and Today.

EARLY INFLUENCES Discovering a Passion for Food.

COOKING SCHOOLS Learning in the Classroom.

APPRENTICING Learning in the Kitchen.

GETTING IN Starting at the Bottom.

DEVELOPING AS A COOK The Next Level.

THE BUSINESS OF COOKING Operting and Running a Restaurant.

TRAVEL, EATING, AND READING Learning Something New Every Day.

PERSEVERING IN THE FACE OF REALITY Through Bad Times and Good.

WHAT'S NEXT? The Chef as Alchemist.

APPENDIX A: Glossary of Restaurant and Kitchen Terms.

APPENDIX B: Selected Professional Cooking Schools in the United States and Abroad.

APPENDIX C: Leading Culinary Organizations.

APPENDIX D: Leading Culinary Periodicals.

APPENDIX E: Brief Biographies of Chefs Interviewed.

INDEX.