Two of the best non-fiction books I've read recently are about food. I think food writing is vastly underrated, but seems to be gaining momentum thanks to some popular recent books.
Heat, by Bill Buford and Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain are gripping forays into the hot, sweaty, grimy and fascinating world of high-end kitchens.
Kitchen Confidential will change your entire perception of the restaurant business. You certainly will never order fish on a Monday again. Bourdain is an amazing writer - funny, articulate, foul-mouthed and full of delicious tidbits of insider information. Here.
Heat by Bill Buford is a different sort of book. Buford, a writer for The New Yorker is an amateur chef drawn in to the restaurant scene by the brash and amazing Mario Batali. Buford interns at one of Batali's New York restaurants and becomes so engrossed in the meaning and history of food that he drags his wife off to Italy where he works as an apprentice butcher in the hills of Tuscany. His obsessions - how eggs made their way into pasta and how certain cuts of meat became popular are interesting historical diversions, but the real story is how Buford goes from a "foodie" to a true chef. Here.
