Dirt
Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking
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4.3 • 134 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
“You can almost taste the food in Bill Buford’s Dirt, an engrossing, beautifully written memoir about his life as a cook in France.” —The Wall Street Journal
What does it take to master French cooking? This is the question that drives Bill Buford to abandon his perfectly happy life in New York City and pack up and (with a wife and three-year-old twin sons in tow) move to Lyon, the so-called gastronomic capital of France. But what was meant to be six months in a new and very foreign city turns into a wild five-year digression from normal life, as Buford apprentices at Lyon’s best boulangerie, studies at a legendary culinary school, and cooks at a storied Michelin-starred restaurant, where he discovers the exacting (and incomprehensibly punishing) rigueur of the professional kitchen.
With his signature humor, sense of adventure, and masterful ability to bring an exotic and unknown world to life, Buford has written the definitive insider story of a city and its great culinary culture.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
Customer Reviews
What a lovely ride….
This book is for anyone who longs to be creating incredible food in a French kitchen in France.
I could never put my finger on why I love to cook so much until this book…
Each time I try something simply delicious, I say to myself, “…yes but, you know what would make this taste even better?”
Oh isn’t it amazing how we humans strive?
PS
The beautiful vocabulary lesson was the proverbial, cherry on top! L.P.
Dirt
Delightful, funny and informative read. I really enjoyed the many facets of this book.