This spring’s crop of chef memoirs (cheffoirs?) and other local food books is overshadowed by Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas’s riveting but flawed Life, on the Line. Forget NYC chef Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones & Butter—what about the diaries of toques like poor Rick Tramonto or Wayne Cohen? For a former English major like me, it’s been difficult to read any of them without playing the Who’s-More-Human? game: the young superchef who blithely conquers all before him; the deeply flawed, born-again, dyslexic kitchen tyrant; or the bumptious, unknown, self-published executive turned line cook. Actually, I think I’d have to choose the perpetually hungry beat cop who just wants a good cheap lunch.
I couldn’t help but compare ex-Tru jefe Tramonto’s cheffoir with Achatz’s, based solely on how each treats his former boss, Charlie Trotter. While the younger chef can’t help taking swats at the notoriously tyrannical Trotter, Tramonto makes no mention of his infamous foie gras-related pissing match with the man, and is nothing but gracious toward his former foe. Maybe it’s a function of maturity, but the elder Tramonto’s frank account of his struggles and flaws—encompassing anxiety, drug abuse, depression, business failures, beastly treatment of colleagues, subordinates, and loved ones, and his ultimate religious redemption—makes him come across as unguarded, humble, and ultimately likable. Recounting his beginnings as a mullet-headed, dope-smoking burnout and his later life as a successful but existentially adrift celebrity chef, the book is light on culinary matters, but each chapter begins with scripture and ends with a recipe. If nothing else it makes me wonder how much more we’d have learned about Achatz’s inner life if he’d waited until he hit a riper, more reflective age.
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Food Trucks: Dispatches and Recipes From the Best Kitchens on Wheels
David J. Haynes and Christopher Garlington
University of Illinois Press, $32.95
