The reach of a chef: beyond the kitchen

Description

"Beginning at Per Se, one of the most recent, exclusive, and expensive of Manhattan's four-star restaurants, Ruhlman takes readers into some of America's most illustrious - and most frenetic - kitchens. Throughout his travels, he seeks out and explains new trends and phenomena, like Las Vegas's recent elevation to the country's food Gomorrah, and returns to previous haunts to see what's changed.;The chef has lost his shoes -- "It's not the French Laundry, per se ..." -- The morphing chef -- Shadow urge -- CIA revisited -- Can't gp home again -- Doctor Ryan -- A kinder, gentler kitchen -- Waiting for Bibimbap -- The American chef -- Edge cuisine: Grant Achatz -- The romantic ideal: Melissa Kelly -- The power of the branded chef -- One thing leads to another -- The branded chef -- The outpost and the rollout -- Emeril and Rachael -- The chefs at 10Columbus Circle -- Per se -- Masa -- Thomas and Masa.;A dispatch from a new world where chefs are stars and culinary school classes are burgeoning, The Reach of a Chef looks at the state of professional cooking in the post-Child, Food Network era via the heavy hitters in the industry such as Thomas Keller and Masa Takayama, Grant Achatz and Melissa Kelly, Emeril Lagasse and a new breed of cooking celebrity: girl next door Rachael Ray." "In the end, readers get an in-the-trenches look at professionals whose very life's work had once been to feed us in order to feed themselves - but is now increasingly a type of work that delivers them to corporate boardrooms and television studios."--Jacket.