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The Hunger: A Story of Food, Desire, and Ambition

by John Delucie

The Hunger: A Story of Food, Desire, and Ambition Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

A page-turning memoir from the chef of The Waverly Inn, New York City's vaunted celebrity gathering spot

The Hunger is an insider's romp through the crazy life of the restaurant business, told by a journeyman chef who fought his way to the top. Trapped in a dead-end job, John DeLucie called it quits and invested his meager savings in a ten-week cooking class. Upon completion, armed with no professional experience and the barest of basic skills, he walked into the renowned gourmet shop Dean & DeLuca and asked for a job. The next day he found himself chopping forty pounds of onions in the prep-kitchen basement. A glamorous new chapter had begun. DeLucie worked his way up the bumpy NYC food chain, from executive chef at La Bottega to Nick & Toni's in East Hampton, eventually finding his way to The Waverly Inn, which he opened with publishing magnate Graydon Carter and several partners. It was here that John married his mastery of simple but unique flavors with Carter's A+ list of glitterati to create downtown's hottest eatery.

The Hunger tracks John though the pitfalls of cooking for a living, as well as the roller-coaster ride that became his personal life. Woven into the grit are the stories behind some of DeLucie's signature recipes, including New York's Best High-End Burger and the now famous truffled mac and cheese. Here is John's tale about food, desire, and appetite--and how one person overcame all odds to make it in the fiercely competitive world of food.

Review:

"With a cooking class and a Dean & Deluca's prep gig under his belt, DeLucie left behind a comfortable finance career for the cutthroat culinary industry of 1990s New York City. Eventually, he'd become a celebrity chef with his own destination restaurant co-owned by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. Beyond talent and drive, DeLucie had the requisite outsized ego to make it in the NYC culinary scene, persevering despite the staggering number of failures (some almost immediately, and sometimes on the word of a single reviewer) he helps open. Readers may find DeLucie's self-important prologue hard to stomach, but if they're willing to humor him they'll find a genuinely good story as well as a survey of celebrity eating habits, drawn from his popular Greenwich Village restaurant The Waverly Inn (after his visit, Karl Lagerfeld sent out for 'just our roasted carrots...every day for a week'). When he puts aside his ego, DeLucie provides an excellent balance of personal details and authentic backstage culinary tales. For all the name-dropping, DeLucie's is a satisfying triumph of hard work and sticktoitness." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Synopsis:

A page-turning memoir from the chef at The Waverly Inn, the celebrity hot spot restaurant in New York City, "The Hunger" is an insider's account of the crazy life that is the restaurant business.

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Grady Harp, September 13, 2009 (view all comments by Grady Harp)
From Riches to Dishrags to Toque and Apron

THE HUNGER is entertaining reading at its best. The tale of a risk taker, John DeLucie, who elected to leave the comfort of the financial world and follow his bumpy dream to have the most popular restaurant in Manhattan - the Waverly Inn - is at once well written, humorous, full of wise concepts of how to do and not to do things that mold a new career, and a bit of gastronomic history that should delight everyone who seeks to discover that 'perfect restaurant'.

But what makes this book such a delight to read is DeLucie's take on the people he has encountered along the way from failures and semi-successes to his ultimate current state of esteem. Here are the weird ones, the snooty clientele and the famous and wannabe famous characters that populate the great city of New York. His insights to human behavior are astute, acerbic, and at times just plain gossipy. All this is mixed as if in a blender and out comes an engaging story that will provides hours of laughter and 'a-has'. And in the end it is also an intimate drawing of a great chef in all his guises.

Grady Harp
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780061579240
Subtitle:
A Story of Food, Desire, and Ambition
Author:
Delucie, John
Author:
Carter, Graydon
Publisher:
Ecco
Subject:
Personal Memoirs
Subject:
General
Subject:
Cooks
Subject:
New york (state)
Subject:
Cooking
Subject:
Cooks -- New York (State) -- New York.
Subject:
DeLucie, John
Publication Date:
May 2009
Binding:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Pages:
256
Dimensions:
8.94x6.50x.89 in. .95 lbs.

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