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Book Review of Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany

5ducksfans avatar reviewed on + 92 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 6


I highly recommend this book to anyone with any sort of interest in food or cooking. I cook, because I have a family and I sort of enjoy it. That's about the extent of interest you need to have to find this book interesting, funny, profound, and highly enjoyable. The food itself is as much a character as the people Buford encounters (and boy, are they colorful!). Buford has a great gift for description - I could see everything he was talking about even though much of it was foreign to me (and to him). He becomes as swept away by his mission as I got reading the book. And the last section of the book, "Dinner With Mario," is as great an ending to a book as any fiction or thriller has ever had. I loved this book, and I will never look at food (in a restaurant, grocery store, or my kitchen) the same again.