But it's not, which is why Heat is so enthralling. If this were the sum of Heat, it would be an entertaining foray into a subculture Americans can't get enough. As Batali is quoted saying more than once, what he does for a living is first and foremost a business. His gluttony for late nights of drinking and feasting is matched only by his lust for cooking mastery and financial success. Along the way, he writes about Batali's picaresque career and a food demimonde as fevered and thrilling as New York's literary scene in the '20s. Buford notes how the kitchen's Latinos, ubiquitous to every restaurant, seem faceless to their co-workers, and he reports acts against hygiene not seen in print since George Orwell's Down and Out in London and Paris. Amid the military-like professionalism, there can be a surly even bullying atmosphere, this despite Batali's distaste for screaming, macho chefs.

And then the chef pretty much abandons him there, forcing Buford, a rank amateur, to find his place in the often brutal pecking order of the kitchen.īesides detailing his many mini-maimings and near-roastings, Buford breaks down how a three-star kitchen actually works. He ushers Buford into the controlled chaos that boils, grills, braises and sautes the critically acclaimed Italian food of Babbo, the crown jewel in Batali's clutch of restaurants. Batali, a pony-tailed tornado of a man who merits the adjective 'Falstafian,' agrees. Buford, at the time The New Yorker's fiction editor, persuaded celebrity chef Mario Batali to take him on as free help - a kitchen slave. The book's conceit is that it's a behind-the-scenes account of the kitchen of a big-city restaurant. But where the first book was a case study of people seemingly dead to the joys of life, Heat is a chronicle of artisans consumed by passion. And Italy, once again, figures as the staging ground of momentous events. It's interesting to see, then, that Buford's new book, Heat, returns him to the sweaty, boozy fold of pasty, beefy and slightly deranged young men. These British thugs eventually head off to Turin for a match, and the rampaging that ensues becomes the book's vivid centerpiece. It was an engrossing piece of reportage in which Buford, an American expat living in England, trailed a group of pasty, beefy and somewhat deranged soccer hooligans. More than 15 years ago, Bill Buford's first book, Among the Thugs was published.

And the series continues all summer long on NPR.org. All Things Considered talks with writers about their favorite buttonhole books. All readers have them - and so do writers. Call them buttonhole books, the ones you urge passionately on friends, colleagues and passersby.

Heat bill buford review