The Reach of a Chef: Beyond the Kitchen

Michael Ruhlman has been our companion and guide as we've been the guides for our son, a recent graduate of the CIA's Culinary Program. Back when we were reading "The Making of a Chef," our son was working lowly jobs in local restaurants. By the time we were reading "The Soul of a Chef", he was working for his first CIA grad, Paul Trujillo, who just happens to have been in Ruhlman's first class and is mentioned in this book. Ruhlman opened the door to this fascinating school, Trujillo told us that our son had the talent and drive to succeed in this demanding school, and a truly outstanding CIA grad, Chef Eric Erway, became our son's mentor at Job Corps. They all paved the way for a crazy kid to find out what he was really made of. This book is so rewarding on so many levels. Other reviewers have written eloquently about the chefs we meet in this book. For me, though, it's the return to the CIA that is most personally significant. Through this book, we get to see the school through an older man's eyes, one who knows how to ask even better questions. We can see how the CIA has evolved along with the profession. Most of all, though, we get to enjoy what I believe to be the evolution of Ruhlman's writing itself. The maturity he brings to this book is most evident toward the end - don't miss it! All I can say is "thank you, Michael Ruhlman" for continuing to shed light on this fascinating and confusing profession as our son wends his way through the journey of becoming a chef. He just started the Baking and Pastry program. Can't wait to see what comes next!

That question is perhaps the major leit motif of Ruhlman's latest work. "Reach" spends significant time revisiting the CIA instructors and classes that Ruhlman wrote about in "Soul of a Chef", noting the "wussification" (my word) of current students vs. those from just a few years ago. Ruhlman makes the point that the CIA is no longer simply about cooking, but also about the restaurant business. And the restaurant business is no longer simply about food. It's now about celebrity and riches. Despite this premise being threaded through the vignettes Ruhlman presents at restaurants such as Primo, Per Se and Alinea, as well as insider's views of Emeril and Rachael Ray, when Ruhlman gets to discussing the incredible Masa, the superficiality of any student designing a path toward celebrity seems an empty pursuit. The yin-yang of presenting Keller's Per Se story right before Masa's is genius on Ruhlman's part - and that the two restaurants are next-door neighbors in NYC is all the more amazing. At the end, we're left perhaps with a little more respect for Ray, a bit of sadness for Keller, a desire to drop $430 at Masa and a curiosity as to where Grant Aschatz is headed next - perhaps right past Ferran Adria as the most compelling working chef today. It's a great read. I'm in the business, but I think even those who aren't but just like food will love this book.

Yet another impeccably researched and insightful exploration of the world of chefs from Ruhlman, one of the very very few non-chef writers who "get it". His look at previously written about subjects--and what's happened to them in the strange new world of "chef branding" and multi-unit expansion--and the terrible lure of Vegas is thoughtful and on target. Chefs who famously never open up to ordinary journalists are remarkably candid with Ruhlman. While thoroughly entertaining for anyone interested in food, cooks and restaurants, this book should also be a standard text in Culinary schools. This is the world that well known and respected chefs who "made it" on the strength of their cooking abilities will live in the future. My only criticism is the dismaying lack of profanity and bile. Ruhlman in person is a viciously funny bagful of venomous snakes. Had he allowed a little more of his infamous Dark Side to leak into the text I, for one, would have been happier. C'mon, Ruhlman! A chef with a SAG card?!! That should be a red flag to a bull!Kill, kill Faster Faster!! In spite of his good natured, Cleveland-born even-handedness, another stellar performance. I plan to give out copies for Christmas.

We are in the midst of deep upheaval in American cooking. The Food Network, the explosion of cookbook publishing, the overnight blossoming of the culinary travel genre, and the celebrity chef phenomenon all mark our new interest in the culture of restaurant food, if not in food per se. The extent of this food-culture is startling. No longer is French cooking the domain of a few big-city Europeanized gourmands. It's everywhere. Heck, even some of the ten-year-old girls on the soccer team I coach spend water breaks yacking about their favorite food shows. My nine-year-old, when I asked what she wanted for supper recently, answered "Grand Aioli". It's downright nutty. So we should gratefully welcome cook/food-writer Michael Ruhlman's excellent new attempt to make sense of it all. He is almost uniquely situated in the celebrity-food world to give us a clear snapshot of what's going on. This book is a series of vignettes of the hectic lives and workplaces of an impressive list of chefs and food-show stars. Thomas Keller, Anthony Bourdain, Wolfgang Puck...even no-brow pom-pom girl Rachel Ray, among several others. Ruhlman's question to them is: what is your role? Haven't you left the kitchen now that you're on TV and being interviewed and promoting your books and traveling from coast to coast to open new restaurants? The answers are fascinating, and reveal more about the business of being a culinary star than any other book I've read. And what a strange, kinetic, exhausting, adrenalized world it is. I felt exhausted just reading about Thomas Keller's schedule. If you're curious about the explosion of the food culture, this is a great primer. It's well-written, anecdotal, entertaining, and riveting. I highly recommend it as summer reading whether you love food or simply love watching it on TV.

`The Reach of a Chef' is Michael Ruhlman's third major journalistic investigation into the world of American culinary practice and personalities and his tenth book, which includes four important cookbook collaborations, especially the highly successful collaborations with the philosopher-king of American cooking, Thomas Keller and the king of New York fish cookery, Eric Rippert. This book is a logical next step after his essays on culinary education, `The Making of a Chef', and basic levels of achievement in the American culinary universe, `The Soul of a Chef'. This investigation explores the techniques by which the successful chef / owner expands their reach beyond the single restaurant and turn their reputation into a marketable brand. An ancillary object of this essay is an examination of culinary celebrity. His primary subjects are virtually all the major stars of the American culinary scene, including Emeril Lagasse, Wolfgang Puck, Thomas Keller, Eric Rippert, Jean-George Vongerichten, Charlie Trotter, Jasper White, Daniel Boulud, Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, Rick Bayless, Patrick O'Connell, Norm Van Aiken, Grant Achatz, Melissa Kelly, and Rachael Ray. The last name may not seem to fit into the same group as the others, and in some important ways, Rachael does not fit the mold that created Puck, Lagasse, Keller, Flay, and Batali. But, with regard to the matters addressed in this book, she is as much of an archetype as all the others. Like Martha Stewart before her, Rachael is turning her name into a BRAND based on accomplishment in the culinary world. Ruhlman even goes so far as to say that Rachael may be the first `brand' which has the impetus to overtake Martha at her own game. The bookend's for the book's presentation of its theme is an insider's look at the recent opening of Thomas Keller's New York fine dining restaurant, Per Se, on the fourth floor of the new Columbus Circle Time Warner center. If this book does nothing else, it reassures us that Keller's kind of devotion to quality is rewarded by both critical and commercial success. I won't keep you in suspense the way Ruhlman does, Per Se comes out of the gate with four shining stars from the all powerful restaurant reviewer of `The New York Times'. And, the highest score was not given grudgingly. The reviewer bewailed the fact that his last visit on which his review would be based would be his last time eating at Per Se for quite some time. Just as I always appreciate it when cookbook authors give fair mention to other cooks on which their work has been based, Ruhlman enhances the pleasure of his read by making several citations from fellow culinary journalists, all of whom are at the top of my list, with Ruhlman, of favorite foodie reads. Leading the pack is Tony Bourdain, a good friend of Ruhlman who, as Ruhlman puts it, is quite smitten with Thomas Keller's accomplishments. One merely has to read Bourdain's chapter on the French Laundry in `A Cook's Tour' to understand his abj