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The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food
Acclaimed "chef writer" Andrew Friedman introduces readers to all the people and processes that come together in a single restaurant dish, creating an entertaining, vivid snapshot of the contemporary restaurant community, modern farming industry, and food-supply chain.
On a typical evening, in a contemporary American restaurant, a table orders their dinner from a server. It's an exchange that happens dozens, or hundreds, of times a night—the core transaction that keeps the place churning. In this book, acclaimed chef writer Andrew Friedman slows down time to focus on a single dish at Chicago's Wherewithall restaurant, following its production and provenances via real-time kitchen and in-the-field reportage, from the moment the order is placed to when the finished dish is delivered to the table.
As various components of this one dish are prepared by the kitchen team, Friedman introduces readers to the players responsible for producing it, from the chefs who conceived the dish and manage the kitchen, to the line cooks and sous chefs who carry out the actual cooking, and the dishwashers who keep pace with the dining room.
Readers will also meet the producers, farmers, and ranchers, who supply the restaurant, as Friedman visits each stop in the supply chain and profiles the key characters whose expertise and effort play essential roles in making the dish possible—they will walk rows of crops that line Midwestern farms, feel the chill of the cooler where beef dry-ages, harvest grapes at a Michigan winery, ride along with a delivery-truck driver, and hear the immigration sagas prevalent amongst often unseen and unheralded farm and restaurant workers.
The Dish is a rollicking ride inside every aspect of a restaurant dish. Both a fascinating window onto our food systems, and a celebration of the unsung heroes of restaurants and the collaborative nature of professional kitchen work, The Dish will ensure that readers never look at any restaurant meal the same way again.
"Masterful. ... Friedman excels at bringing the dining room to boisterous life with vivid, telling details. ... This will sate gastronomes and casual foodies alike." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An entertaining, eye-opening investigation...a lively look into what goes into the production of one meal, on one day, in one restaurant." —Kirkus Reviews
"Readers intrigued by the fine-dining industry will not only enjoy this work, but will be reminded to think more deeply about those serving them and working behind the kitchen door the next time they go out to eat."
—Booklist
"Andrew Friedman's deep dive into The Dish gives us a great appreciation and understanding of the people who play a part in the meals we order in restaurants. This book should be required reading for all of us who enjoy going out to eat!" —Marcus Samuelsson, James Beard Award-winning author, chef, and restauranter
"Andrew Friedman has achieved a long overdue thing: shown just how much skill, connectivity, personal touch, and professional grace exists in our restaurant culture. It is a real gift to have an archivist like Andrew who cares so much about cooks, producers and service workers document this work with such a loving and truthful eye." —Lisa Donovan, James Beard Award-winning author of Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger Perpetual Hunger
This information about The Dish was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Luca Pioltelli
Andrew Friedman has made a career of getting to know the heads and hearts of professional cooks and athletes. For more than ten years, Friedman has collaborated with many of the nation's best and most revered chefs on cookbooks and other writing projects. His writing career began in 1997, when Alfred Portale, asked him to collaborate on the Gotham Bar and Grill Cookbook. The book received wide acclaim and since then he has worked as a cookbook collaborator on more than twenty projects, helping a number of the nation's best chefs (Alfred Portale, David Waltuck, Tom Valenti, and many others) share their unique culinary viewpoints with readers.
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