Dirt

Starred review from March 9, 2020
Buford (Heat) delivers a vivid and often laugh-out-loud account of the tribulations, humblings, and triumphs he and his family endured in the five years they lived in France. In the mid-aughts, Buford determines to move to France to learn about French cooking, and after much effort he, his wife, and their twin toddler boys arrive in Lyon, a city notable for “its gritty darkness, the sewage smells,” where it’s initially impossible for Buford to find a kitchen to work in. It isn’t until he does a stint at a cooking school that he finagles a spot in a Michelin-starred restaurant, where the work is relentless and the culture unreformed (an Indonesian cook, for instance, is given the name Jackie Chan). Meanwhile, Buford’s twin boys become fully French, and Buford puts on his culinary deerstalker cap to investigate the influence of Italian cooking on French cuisine, and vice versa. Buford’s a delightful narrator, and his stories of attending a pig slaughter, befriending the owner of a local bakery, and becoming gradually accepted by the locals are by turns funny, intimate, insightful, and occasionally heartbreaking. It’s a remarkable book, and even readers who don’t know a sabayon from a Sabatier will find it endlessly rewarding.

March 15, 2020
An American family revels in French culture and cuisine. Journalist and foodie Buford, a writer and editor for the New Yorker and former longtime editor of Granta, follows Heat (2006), his chronicle of cooking in Italy, with an ebullient, entertaining memoir of life in Lyon, where he, his wife, and two young sons settled so that he could indulge his desire to learn French cooking. Planning to stay six months, they wound up living in the city, renowned for its gastronomy, for several years, during which Buford worked for a baker, gained admission to an acclaimed cooking school, and toiled among the staff of a famous restaurant. The first months were difficult, he admits: "each member of our small family had come to doubt the wisdom of the project." But he and his sons learned French (the children more quickly than their father), the boys assimilated to school, and his wife pursued her ambition to earn a diploma as a wine expert. Buford honed his skills as a chef and enthusiastically steeped himself in the culture of the French kitchen, where apprentices suffer "unregulated bullying and humiliation." As the author demonstrates, French kitchens are no less hierarchical and combative than those in Italy, and nothing less than perfection is tolerated. It "was all about rules: that there was always one way and only one way" to peel asparagus, for example, devein goose livers, and construct puff pastry; that the three principles of a French plate are "color, volume, and texture"; and that the secret of glorious bread, meat, cheese, and wine is the soil. "What makes Lyonnais food exceptional," Buford writes, is "a chef's access to the nearby ingredients" from local farms, mountain lakes, and rivers. "Lyon," he adds, "is a geographical accident of good food and food practices." He describes in mouthwatering detail the many dishes he cooked and ate and the charming restaurants the family visited. A lively, passionate homage to fine food. (first printing of 125,000)

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Starred review from May 1, 2020

Once you've mastered Italian cuisine, what's next? New Yorker writer Buford (Heat) recounts his time working for Mario Batali, and deciding to move--along with his wife and twin toddler sons--to Lyon, France. From a rocky start, which included missed flights and difficulty securing visas, Buford eventually found work in a local bakery, studied at L'Institut Bocuse, and navigated the hierarchy of the award-winning La M�re Brazier. But besides grueling days at the restaurant, Buford also spends time investigating the contentious history of French cuisine (could there be a connection with the Italian Medici daughters, who moved to France when they married?), and researching the seminal recipes of Brillat-Savarin. The author and his family remain in France for five years before returning to New York. VERDICT An often funny and eye-opening behind-the-scenes look at haute cuisine, as well as life as an expat in France. Readers will be engrossed not only by Buford's story, but that of his family as well.--Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2020
Having learned his way around a Tuscan kitchen (Heat, 2006), Buford used his connections with American chefs to garner a novice's spot as cook in a French restaurant. He settles for nothing less than an apprenticeship in Lyon, esteemed as France's gastronomic capital. Uprooting his wife and twin sons from New York City in itself proves quite an accomplishment, dealing with an exacting bureaucracy to produce necessary visas, finding a place to live, and enrolling the boys in school. Cooking at La M�re Brazier and attending classes at L'Institut Bocuse, France's premier culinary school, proves daunting enough for the language barrier alone, but even more challenging to earn respect in the closed world of chefdom. Buford's fellow cooks are barely out of their teen years and not above physical violence when provoked. He delves into the controversial origins of French cuisine and restaurants, drawing unflinching portraits of past and present luminaries like culinary school founder Paul Bocuse himself. He pursues origins of dishes, sauces, and their ingredients, even participating in the stark grittiness of butchering a pig and learning that in France the best, most coveted flavors come from the earthiest animal organs. An inside look into haute cuisine.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)