BILL BUFORD
Monday, June 12 at 7:30 p.m.

Over a dozen years after his compelling if hair-raising account of hanging out amongst soccer (football) hooligan, Among the Thugs, former Granta and New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford is back with a terrific, vivid new work of participatory journalism, Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany (Knopf). Set mostly in New York—with some venturings over the Atlantic—this account has its share of Seattle connections, as much of it is based on the work and life of New York chef Mario Batali—whose father Armandino operates our own neighborhood's legendary Salumi. "Buford's book starts smartly—he first met dynamic celebrity chef Mario Batali at a dinner party at his own home, where Batali sparkled until 3 a.m.—and continues at a fast clip as he conceives of the notion of becoming Batali's 'kitchen slave'...his subject became an obsession, and over the next three years, he investigated a rich menu of subjects: what makes a three-star restaurant work; what it takes to be a TV food star; the techniques and history of Italian cooking, not just from library research, but from repeated trips to Italy to visit Batali's relatives. Terrific culinary writing tracks Buford's successive passions...This is a wonderfully detailed and highly amusing book..." - Publishers Weekly. "An all-too-rare description of the real business of cooking, its characters and its subculture. I lingered over every sentence like a heavily truffled risotto." - Anthony Bourdain.

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