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Restaurant Man. Vita, Vino E Cibo Di Un Giudice Di Masterchef (2012)

by Joe Bastianich(Favorite Author)

3.47 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Rizzoli

review 1: I've been binging somewhat on books about food. I'm working on an exhibition about food, so fair enough. Between Lucky Peach consumption and delving into Harold McGee's excellent and authoritative On Food and Cooking, I've been sampling books about chefs and restaurants. Now, I have been known to watch the occasional episode of MasterChef, the serialized public debasement of home cooks striving in a "reality" that bears no resemblance to ACTUAL home cooking (yeah, Gordon Ramsay, I'd like to see you clean up at the same time as you cook, while dealing with toddler melt-down and the sudden appearance of a school friend who carries an epi-pen for nut allergies, along with a child who will eat no food that has touched another food, even glancingly). On that show, Joe Bastianic... moreh is the asshat who has been known to spit out food while giving the cheftestant a dead-fish stare. So I was really shocked to actually, you know, LIKE him. His book is more show than tell (and I don't mean that in the fiction-writing way--for an autobiography, less flashy "show" and more "tell" would better). There's a lot of swinging dickery, but if you can look past that, there's a mama's boy who deeply cares about making the customer happy. What more can you ask of someone who runs restaurants?Having just finished Back of the House by Scott Haan (a psychologist's look at professional kitchens and chefs), I would have enjoyed reading more about Mr. Bastianich's complicated relationship with his father. He spends about three paragraphs analyzing this, when the book is called "Restaurant Man", ostensibly after his father and by implication, Joe Bastianich himself.I wonder what made him write the book, what his motive was, and who he thought his audience was. I don't think it's overweening ego. He certainly doesn't need the money. I'm left wondering if through writing it, he better understands where he comes from, and can convey that in a public way, particularly to his kids. Having eaten at Babbo's a couple of times over the last 15 years or so, I was delighted to know how the restaurant came about, and how it's angled to surprise and delight. I came away wanting to try more Italian wines. I want to re-watch that MasterChef episode where the judges' kids were part of it.Restaurant Man was an easy read, not quite as fun and fast as Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, the prose style chatty and full of voice, the structure easy to understand. Not quite as revealing as one might like (if wearing white Capezios is the worst crime Bastianich has committed, I'll eat my acid wash jeans), but revealing in ways Bastianich might not have intended, Restaurant Man has a place on my sagging shelf of food-related good reads.
review 2: I enjoyed listening to the audio of this on my drive back to MD today. I thought the info on the business side of the restaurant industry was very interesting, as well as how the empire of Italian eateries in NYC developed with Lidia Bastianich, Joe Bastianich, and Mario Batali developed. I sometimes thought the self-praise and name dropping was a bit much. I know it's part of that world, but a little humility, or discretion, never hurts.As for the audio, it was engaging, but it took awhile to get into the groove of listening to it. Joe reads somewhat stiltedly, with awkward pauses and sentence breaks. Overall, not bad, though. less

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