Heat [Paperback]

A "GLOBE & MAIL" BEST BOOK OF 2006
A "NEW YORK TIMES" NOTABLE BOOK OF 2006
"Sharing Buford's table talk is a pleasure not to be passed up." -- Michael Redhill, "The Globe and Mail
"
""Heat "is a book about obsession, written by a man in the grip of one. It is fuelled by food, but food is not its only subject -- love, sex, comradeship, terror and pain are all part of the story too." --"The Telegraph"
"A dazzling and funny account of two magnificently mad years." --"The Guardian"
"[Buford] excels at vibrantly colourful descriptive writing. . . . What shines through is the story of Bill Buford falling in love with food, and his passionate journey of learning." --"Vancouver Sun
" "it is clear that Buford can hold his own with anyone in the foodie pedantry stakes.... "Heat" is a subtle, expletive-heavy, genuine account of a writer's engagement with food.... [an] ultimately nourishing book." ""--"Times Literary Supplement"
"A messy, brilliant book,

'In learning to cook like an `adrenaline addict', Buford begins to
write like one, endowing Heat with an energy at once reassuring and
necessary for anyone wielding `a giant tomahawk'.'

'Endlessly entertaining read'

'Engagingly written'

'Heat is by far the funniest, most passionately felt and intensely flavoured piece of writing about food, its possibilities and its culture, you are likely to read' - Tim Adams, Observer

‘Funny, well written and slightly exhausting’ --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

'one of the most evocative testaments to our - and his - current obsession.' - Steven Shaplin --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

'The author is a world-class wordsmith.' --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

"a story of seared flesh and unadulterated pork butchery"
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

crackles with energy, erudition and cinematic narration
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Heat is the story of an amateur cook surviving - or, perhaps more accurately, trying to survive - in a professional kitchen.

Until recently, Bill Buford was an enthusiastic, if rather chaotic, home cook. His meals were characterized by two incompatible qualities: their ambition and his inexperience at preparing them. Nevertheless, his lifelong regret was that he'd never worked in a professional kitchen.

Then, three years ago, an opportunity presented itself. Buford was asked by the New Yorker to write a profile of Mario Batali, a Falstaffian figure of voracious appetites who ran one of New York's most successful three-star restaurants. Batali had learned his craft by years of training - first, working in London with the young Marco Pierre White; then in California during the Food Revolution; and finally in Italy, being taught how to make pasta by hand in a hillside trattoria. Buford accepted the commission, if Batali would let him work in his kitchen, as his slave. He worked his way up to being a 'line cook' and then left New York to apprentice himself under the very teachers who had taught his teacher: preparing game with Marco Pierre White, making pasta in a hillside trattoria, and finally, in a town in Northern Italy, becoming an Italian butcher.

Heat is a marvellous hybrid: a memoir of Buford's kitchen adventure, the story of Batali's amazing rise to culinary fame, a dazzling behind-the-scenes look at a famous restaurant, and an illuminating exploration of why food matters. It is a book to delight in, and to savour.

In the tradition of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, a brilliant book about working in the kitchen of one of New York's most fashionable restaurants and with one of its most charismatic chefs.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Bill Buford is a staff writer and European correspondent for the New Yorker, where he was previously the fiction editor for eight years. He was the editor-in-chief for Granta magazine for sixteen years and was also the publisher of Granta Books. He is the author of Among the Thugs. He lives in New York City.