---
product_id: 1867882
title: "Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany"
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---

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

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- **What is this?** Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
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## Description

The book that helped define a genre: Heat is a beloved culinary classic, an adventure in the kitchen and into Italian cuisine, by Bill Buford, author of Dirt . Bill Buford was a highly acclaimed writer and editor at the New Yorker when he decided to leave for a most unlikely destination: the kitchen at Babbo, one of New York City’s most popular and revolutionary Italian restaurants. Finally realizing a long-held desire to learn first-hand the experience of restaurant cooking, Buford soon finds himself drowning in improperly cubed carrots and scalding pasta water on his quest to learn the tricks of the trade. His love of Italian food then propels him further afield: to Italy, to discover the secrets of pasta-making and, finally, how to properly slaughter a pig. Throughout, Buford stunningly details the complex aspects of Italian cooking and its long history, creating an engrossing and visceral narrative stuffed with insight and humor. The result is a hilarious, self-deprecating, and fantasically entertaining journey into the heart of the Italian kitchen.

Review: Rich and Illuminating - Like a master chef's kitchen, Bill Buford's journal of his food journey is rich and sensual with flavor and aromas. An established magazine editor and successful author Bill Buford has always been an amateur cook, but in his late forties he decides that living in an ephemeral and materialistic world of slight success, fashion, and fame is not enough for him. He wants to understand the soul of things, and ultimately that means understanding where the food he eats comes from and how it is best prepared, and while at first that means writing a magazine article on Mario Batali, the search ultimately takes him to Italy where he learns to make fresh pasta, butcher pigs and cows, and while falling in love with tradition and heritage also come to see poignantly how they can change and disappear as well. The book swings back and forth between two places. First there's Buford's hometown of New York City, where Mario Batali runs the finest Italian restaurant in America and where Bill Buford has situated himself as a kitchen slave. Then there are the hills of northern Italy where Batali learned the power and allure of true and traditional Italian cooking, and where Buford traveled many times in the search for the essence of food, and the origin of things. Batali's Michelin three-star kitchen is a source of endless conflict, and Buford describes it brilliantly as though the kitchen staff were a ragtag motley platoon of misfits and maniacs caught at war. The hills of Italy, on the other hand, are an endless source of fascination and wonder for Buford, and it is in these sections -- powered by Buford's love -- that are slow and at times ponderous to read. Like a brilliantly prepared Italian dish, "Heat" is full of subtle and sublime flavor, created by the author's wonderful and precise use of detail and food nouns, and while this like good food can activate all our senses and stimulate intoxicating memories it can also be at times too rich and thus at times a bit revolting. (Was an entire chapter on polenta really necessary?) And this book can only be truly appreciated by the true gourmand, as it is so densely packed with culinary terminology and thinking. While Buford's preparation and execution can be a bit much, I did come away learning a lot from this book, lessons that will stay with me for the rest of my life, as I deepen my culinary practice: How simplicity can take a lifetime to master, how a food tastes of its ingredients (case in point is how pasta is defined by the quality of its egg) and of the devotion of its practitioners (it seems that only petite Italian women with very small hands with nothing to do all day but make tortellini can make true tortellini), how meat is defined not by the breed of the animal but by the breeding of the animal (feed a cow real grass, and let it grow strong and big by letting it till the fields and roam the pastures, and you'll have excellent beef), and how food can unite families and define cultures like nothing else (Italians believe they invented food). And so unfortunately with the advent of modernization, technology, and globalization, food culture is slowly being lost to us. Here is an Italian master's poetic and poignant description of what we have lost: "In the seventies, the chianine were good. They tasted of the hillsides and clean air. They ate grass and had acres to roam in, and, because they were work animals, they were exercised constantly. The meat was firm and pure. It might take two weeks before it softened up. Today, the chianine do not have hillsides to roam in, because you use a tractor to work vines, not an animal. And instead of grass, they eat cereals, grains, and protein pellets: mush. They eat mush. They taste of mush. And after the animal is slaughtered, the meat behaves like mush: it disintegrates in days. A chianina is a thing to flee from!"
Review: Every foodie's dream... and nightmare - The book is Buford's memoir of what started out as his attempt to learn what it was like to work in and run a restaurant and to become a better cook. In the end, it turned into an obsession to truly understand Italian cooking and to gain the kind of insight into food and its preparation that was handed down for millenia by people who lived close to the land and to the source of their food. Many people will pick up the book because of its association with Mario Batali, the famed Italian chef of the "Food Network," and while he plays a prominent role, it is not a book about him. Batali is one of a handful of figures--all larger than life--who lead Buford on his journey of discovery. Here's a warning for you: If you want to keep alive the myth of the jovial but tame TV chef, don't pick up this book because in it Batali is revealed as a slightly manic, foul-mouthed Puckish Dionysius, who swears with gusto, cracks sex jokes, and has a youthful history full of immoral pursuits. In other words, not unlike many of the food service professionals I worked with in the years I worked in restaurant kitchens. For another thing, if you think you might want to become a chef because it sounds romantic, definitely read this book and become disabused of the notion quickly. It's tough and demanding work that takes a toll, especially at the higher levels of prestige and service, but which can be very rewarding too. While profiling Batali's rise to stardom, Buford recounts his experiences starting out as an unpaid kitchen worker at Batali's famed New York restaurant, Babbo, where he works his way up the chain from prep worker to pasta maker to line cook. But his journey doesn't stop there. Buford is constantly traveling to Italy: to learn pasta-making from Batali's teacher in Emilia-Romagna; to learn about meat from the world's most famous butcher in Tuscany; and more. At its heart this is a book about food from a fan's perspective and Buford is the right guide. In the beginning, he's a barely competent cook, more enthusiastic than capable and we can picture ourselves in his shoes, moving from serving a marginal meal to friends into one of New York's most famous kitchens. Soon enough he's butchering a pig in his own apartment and smuggling secret ingredients unavailable in the US in his suitcase from Italy and taking Italian lessons at a scula in the Village and finally, at the end, being given the opportunity to do what every foodie dilettante dreams of and refusing it. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and read it over three days. It's not a small book and not simple either, but it went quickly because of the quality of the prose. Every time I picked up the book I got a craving, sometimes pasta, sometimes a nice steak, always wine. In fact, I've had a nice glass of red with me almost the entire time reading the book. I am curious how the people that Buford profiles feel about how they were portrayed in the book. Many of them come across as petty and arrogant, albeit passionate about what they do. The reality is that there few perfect saints or perfect rogues, and that we all fall somewhere in between on a continuum between the two extremes. What comes through is that this passion which strays into arrogance is what separates the amateur from the artist and is often a hallmark of experts in any number of subjects, from sculpture to music to food.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #73,411 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #34 in Mid Atlantic U.S. Biographies #51 in Italian Cooking, Food & Wine #85 in Gastronomy Essays (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,482 Reviews |

## Images

![Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61PF7ei-zjL.jpg)

## Available Options

This product comes in different **Media Language, Media Format** options.

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rich and Illuminating
*by J***N on February 10, 2013*

Like a master chef's kitchen, Bill Buford's journal of his food journey is rich and sensual with flavor and aromas. An established magazine editor and successful author Bill Buford has always been an amateur cook, but in his late forties he decides that living in an ephemeral and materialistic world of slight success, fashion, and fame is not enough for him. He wants to understand the soul of things, and ultimately that means understanding where the food he eats comes from and how it is best prepared, and while at first that means writing a magazine article on Mario Batali, the search ultimately takes him to Italy where he learns to make fresh pasta, butcher pigs and cows, and while falling in love with tradition and heritage also come to see poignantly how they can change and disappear as well. The book swings back and forth between two places. First there's Buford's hometown of New York City, where Mario Batali runs the finest Italian restaurant in America and where Bill Buford has situated himself as a kitchen slave. Then there are the hills of northern Italy where Batali learned the power and allure of true and traditional Italian cooking, and where Buford traveled many times in the search for the essence of food, and the origin of things. Batali's Michelin three-star kitchen is a source of endless conflict, and Buford describes it brilliantly as though the kitchen staff were a ragtag motley platoon of misfits and maniacs caught at war. The hills of Italy, on the other hand, are an endless source of fascination and wonder for Buford, and it is in these sections -- powered by Buford's love -- that are slow and at times ponderous to read. Like a brilliantly prepared Italian dish, "Heat" is full of subtle and sublime flavor, created by the author's wonderful and precise use of detail and food nouns, and while this like good food can activate all our senses and stimulate intoxicating memories it can also be at times too rich and thus at times a bit revolting. (Was an entire chapter on polenta really necessary?) And this book can only be truly appreciated by the true gourmand, as it is so densely packed with culinary terminology and thinking. While Buford's preparation and execution can be a bit much, I did come away learning a lot from this book, lessons that will stay with me for the rest of my life, as I deepen my culinary practice: How simplicity can take a lifetime to master, how a food tastes of its ingredients (case in point is how pasta is defined by the quality of its egg) and of the devotion of its practitioners (it seems that only petite Italian women with very small hands with nothing to do all day but make tortellini can make true tortellini), how meat is defined not by the breed of the animal but by the breeding of the animal (feed a cow real grass, and let it grow strong and big by letting it till the fields and roam the pastures, and you'll have excellent beef), and how food can unite families and define cultures like nothing else (Italians believe they invented food). And so unfortunately with the advent of modernization, technology, and globalization, food culture is slowly being lost to us. Here is an Italian master's poetic and poignant description of what we have lost: "In the seventies, the chianine were good. They tasted of the hillsides and clean air. They ate grass and had acres to roam in, and, because they were work animals, they were exercised constantly. The meat was firm and pure. It might take two weeks before it softened up. Today, the chianine do not have hillsides to roam in, because you use a tractor to work vines, not an animal. And instead of grass, they eat cereals, grains, and protein pellets: mush. They eat mush. They taste of mush. And after the animal is slaughtered, the meat behaves like mush: it disintegrates in days. A chianina is a thing to flee from!"

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Every foodie's dream... and nightmare
*by D***I on January 4, 2007*

The book is Buford's memoir of what started out as his attempt to learn what it was like to work in and run a restaurant and to become a better cook. In the end, it turned into an obsession to truly understand Italian cooking and to gain the kind of insight into food and its preparation that was handed down for millenia by people who lived close to the land and to the source of their food. Many people will pick up the book because of its association with Mario Batali, the famed Italian chef of the "Food Network," and while he plays a prominent role, it is not a book about him. Batali is one of a handful of figures--all larger than life--who lead Buford on his journey of discovery. Here's a warning for you: If you want to keep alive the myth of the jovial but tame TV chef, don't pick up this book because in it Batali is revealed as a slightly manic, foul-mouthed Puckish Dionysius, who swears with gusto, cracks sex jokes, and has a youthful history full of immoral pursuits. In other words, not unlike many of the food service professionals I worked with in the years I worked in restaurant kitchens. For another thing, if you think you might want to become a chef because it sounds romantic, definitely read this book and become disabused of the notion quickly. It's tough and demanding work that takes a toll, especially at the higher levels of prestige and service, but which can be very rewarding too. While profiling Batali's rise to stardom, Buford recounts his experiences starting out as an unpaid kitchen worker at Batali's famed New York restaurant, Babbo, where he works his way up the chain from prep worker to pasta maker to line cook. But his journey doesn't stop there. Buford is constantly traveling to Italy: to learn pasta-making from Batali's teacher in Emilia-Romagna; to learn about meat from the world's most famous butcher in Tuscany; and more. At its heart this is a book about food from a fan's perspective and Buford is the right guide. In the beginning, he's a barely competent cook, more enthusiastic than capable and we can picture ourselves in his shoes, moving from serving a marginal meal to friends into one of New York's most famous kitchens. Soon enough he's butchering a pig in his own apartment and smuggling secret ingredients unavailable in the US in his suitcase from Italy and taking Italian lessons at a scula in the Village and finally, at the end, being given the opportunity to do what every foodie dilettante dreams of and refusing it. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and read it over three days. It's not a small book and not simple either, but it went quickly because of the quality of the prose. Every time I picked up the book I got a craving, sometimes pasta, sometimes a nice steak, always wine. In fact, I've had a nice glass of red with me almost the entire time reading the book. I am curious how the people that Buford profiles feel about how they were portrayed in the book. Many of them come across as petty and arrogant, albeit passionate about what they do. The reality is that there few perfect saints or perfect rogues, and that we all fall somewhere in between on a continuum between the two extremes. What comes through is that this passion which strays into arrogance is what separates the amateur from the artist and is often a hallmark of experts in any number of subjects, from sculpture to music to food.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ If you liked Kitchen Confidential and are interested in Italian Food, read this
*by A***M on May 10, 2020*

I really enjoyed this book. Although it was published in 2006, I just discovered it. I was moved by an excellent article by the author, “Baking Bread in Lyon” published in The New Yorker in the lead up to the release of his newest book Dirt. When ordering Dirt I saw he had written Heat and decided to read it first. Heat is very well written. Buford was the editor of a literary magazine and the fiction editor at the New Yorker. The pages seemed to fly by and I found it engaging throughout. You will probably enjoy this read if you are interested in Italy and the Italian approach to food and/or liked Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential.” There are some crazy characters in kitchens and Buford does a great job describing them. Mario Batali’s larger-than-life personality and his rise in the food world feature prominently throughout. This book originated as a New Yorker profile on Mario Batali. Buford took the opportunity of writing the article and befriending Mario to work for over a year (without pay) in the kitchen of Babbo. He then spent months in Italy learning how to make pasta and how to butcher. This was written several years before Batali’s disgrace associated with the #metoo movement, and it’s easy to see how his heavy drinking, his general approach, his sometimes arrogant attitude and the culture in many male-dominated professional kitchens would lead to an abusive workplace. Buford gives great insights into the hierarchy of Babbo’s kitchen, the posturing, the literal bumping, and the infighting. One of the staff mentioned in the book, Frank Langello, who became the executive chef is described by Buford as temperamental and abusive. I googled him to see what he was up to now and found out he was fired in early 2018 after misconduct allegations. The mentions of Joe Bastianich, Mario’s former business partner, were also interesting because I’m familiar with Joe from having watched him on the television show MasterChef. One thing I’m genuinely curious about is how one affords to live in New York City and spend months in Italy while working without pay. Did he get a big advance? Had he done a great job saving and lived off that? Was his wife’s salary more than adequate? Are they simply independently wealthy? Now I am off to read Dirt, and I bet I’ll end up reading his first book, Among the Thugs, because he is such a good writer.

## Frequently Bought Together

- Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
- Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking
- Among the Thugs

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*Last updated: 2026-10-08*