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Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World
by Jeff Gordinier
Book Reviewed by:A food critic chronicles four years spent traveling with renowned chef René Redzepi in search of the most tantalizing flavors the world has to offer.
Hungry is a book about the hunger not only for food but for risk, reinvention, creative breakthroughs, and connection. Feeling stuck in his work and home life, writer Jeff Gordinier happened into a fateful meeting with Danish chef René Redzepi, whose restaurant, Noma, has been called the best in the world. A restless perfectionist, Redzepi was at the top of his game but looking to tear it all down, to shutter his restaurant and set out for new places, flavors, and recipes.
This is the story of the subsequent four years of globe-trotting culinary adventure, with Gordinier joining Redzepi as his Sancho Panza. In the jungle of the Yucatán peninsula, Redzepi and his comrades go off-road in search of the perfect taco and the secrets of molé. In idyllic Sydney, they forage for sea rocket and wild celery on surf-lashed beaches. On a boat in the Arctic Circle, a lone fisherman guides them to what may or may not be his secret cache of the world's finest sea urchins. And back in Copenhagen, the quiet canal-lined city where Redzepi started it all, he plans the resurrection of his restaurant on the unlikely site of a garbage-filled empty lot. Along the way, readers meet Redzepi's merry band of friends and collaborators, including acclaimed chefs such as Danny Bowien, Kylie Kwong, Rosio Sánchez, David Chang, and Enrique Olvera.
Hungry is a memoir, a travelogue, a portrait of a chef, and a chronicle of the moment when daredevil cooking became the most exciting and groundbreaking form of artistry.
For foodies, this slim volume is a brisk, delightful tour through world cuisine, as well as a shrewd character study of one of the new breed of celebrity chefs. Redzepi "comes across as a man with a mission, and his overriding manifesto might boil down to this: Look more deeply. There is so much around us to relish."..continued
Full Review
(677 words)
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(Reviewed by Rebecca Foster).
Jeff Gordinier, the author of Hungry (about his travels with René Redzepi), dates the concept of the modern celebrity chef to 1990, when Marco Pierre White, a London chef with a famously fiery temper, released the cookbook White Heat. A decade later, Anthony Bourdain, who had a similar bad-boy image powered by sex and drug use, published Kitchen Confidential. Gordon Ramsay was something of a British counterpart: a foul-mouthed cook who doesn't suffer fools and demands authenticity from food. Gordinier refers to such chefs as the "rock stars" of the industry.
A number of the cultural icons who have influenced our thinking about food have never managed a restaurant kitchen, though. Think of Julia Child, who published the cookbook ...
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Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance
This wonderful book is really about the adventures of two men: a great chef and a great journalist. Hungry is a feast for the senses, filled with complex passion and joy, bursting with life. Not only did Jeff Gordinier make me want to jump on the next flight (to Mexico, Copenhagen, Sydney) in search of the perfect meal, but he also reminded me to stop and savor the ride.
