Roasting in Hell's Kitchen: Temper Tantrums, F Words, and the Pursuit of Perfection.
 
Gordon Ramsay.

            Everybody seems shocked to find out that Gordon Ramsay is a real human in all the reviews I've read online about this book.  Some were even saying that after reading this book they were sure he was the greatest chef in the world.  Do I agree with any of that?  No.  If writing were the mark of a great chef then Anthony Bourdain would be the greatest chef in the world.  I cannot as a cook separate all the tell alls and memoirs that have come out of the culinary world as of late from "Kitchen Confidential," Bourdain did it first and he did it the best.  Period.

            However, I can still read other books and enjoy them.  Roasting in Hell's Kitchen is a really good book to tell you the truth.  I read it in about two days (two working days, I wasn't curled up in front of the fire with some hot cocoa, don't get the wrong idea!), and never felt like I was rushing to get anywhere.  It does lag in a few spots, especially in the final chapter, but other chapters were so great that it really didn't matter that much.

            Where 'Confidential' was a tell all story about how crazy the people who cook your food are, Hell's Kitchen was more of an explanation of why.  I remember reading 'Confidential' the first time shocked at how I remembered almost every story in it from some point in my young career; the wildness, the brutality, the habits, the screwing around and most importantly the loyalty.  But Bourdain more or less just said here we are, we're crazy, don't you love us?  Maybe that's because honestly he didn't have the same childhood as most of us in the trade.  I don't know anybody who vacationed in France for the summer eating oysters right out of the ocean and taking in all the culinary culture every year of their childhood and I doubt you do either.

            Most of the guys I know didn't have whimsical childhoods like that.  Most of the guys I know had a pretty rough childhood in one way or another.  Including my brother and I, and it is there where Ramsay hits his story home.  Much like Bourdain, Ramsay was able tell the story of his childhood and the relations of his family in such a way as to make you feel he'd spied on you.  The specifics might not be all the same but he understood what it was in him, what it is in a lot of us that makes us turn out to be great in the kitchen, and he didn't hold anything back about it either! 

            Where as Bourdain's book was full of "we were so cool" and "they were so lame" surrounding his tell all of things that really do happen in kitchens all over the continent Ramsay was letting you in on things you really needn't know.  Like his low sperm count.  His personal chapters about his father and brother are the two high points of the book.  At some points in the chapter about his dad you feel yourself thinking "yeah I get it, bad guy, move on" but by the time you finish the chapter you're glad he stuck it out for a while.  The chapter on his brother feels like he wrote it pretty fast.  It also feels like he's hoping his brother will find a copy of it and read it, it's almost a pleading letter at points. 

            As far as a "kitchen stories" (a new genre I'm creating for all the new chef writing) book goes it's pretty good, I mean he can write alright, not as good as Bourdain, but not as bad as my two year old niece!  My problems were that of pace in spots, sometimes it felt he was rambling, he seemed almost to 'let me explain' and apologetic sometimes, and for God's sake get a real editor next time there's a spot in the book where even his wife's name is spelled wrong!  It was one of the worst books I've ever seen for editing, but that kind of made it fun sometimes catching all the mistakes!