Mincemeat: The Education of an Italian Chef - Couverture rigide

“The bad-boy chef memoir might as well have its own section in bookstores and Mincemeat places itself squarely in a tradition personified by Anthony Bourdain...Mr. Lucarelli is also a hilariously funny writer...His book reads like a picaresque novel as he roams from kitchen to kitchen, encountering thick-necked mobsters, lustful waitresses and cheating bosses. His description of an encounter with a pastry chef he meets at a party in Rome is delivered in typical deadpan humor.” –Wall Street Journal

"If you're in the mood for an internationally acclaimed, intellectually captivating memoir with an almost Conradian atmosphere, you'll be served well by maverick chef Leonardo Lucarelli's Mincemeat." –ELLE

“Wise and often very funny, the book offers sumptuous glimpses into human foibles and provides readers an unforgettable taste of the unabashedly sordid realities that underlie the high-gloss world of Italian cuisine. A wickedly candid memoir.” –Kirkus Reviews

“If you love food but not cooking, satisfy your appetite with Mincemeat: the Education of an Italian Chef, Leonardo Lucarelli’s kitchen confidential from bel paese.” –Family Circle Magazine

"Enthralling." –BBC.com

“Celebrated chef Lucarelli has a bad-boy reputation, but he’s more than just the Italian Anthony Bourdain. In his new memoir, the chef and anthropologist writes about his experiences working in some of Italy’s finest restaurants, where employees live hard and wild, but always adhere to an unwritten code of loyalty.” –MensJournal.com

“Personal and heartfelt...Mincemeat is a damn good memoir.” –Shelf Awareness 

"Translated from the Italian, Lucarelli’s culinary autobiography moves at breakneck speed, just like his kitchen." –Booklist

With the wit and pace of Anthony Bourdain, Italian chef and anthropologist Leonardo Lucarelli sketches the exhilarating life behind the closed doors of restaurants, and the unlikely work ethics of the kitchen.
 
In Italy, five-star restaurants and celebrity chefs may seem, on the surface, a part of the landscape. In reality, the restaurant industry is as tough, cutthroat, and unforgiving as anywhere else in the world--sometimes even colluding with the shady world of organized crime. The powerful voice of Leonardo Lucarelli takes us through the underbelly of Italy's restaurant world. Lucarelli is a professional chef who for almost two decades has been roaming Italy opening restaurants, training underpaid, sometimes hopelessly incompetent sous-chefs, courting waitresses, working long hours, riding high on drugs, and cursing a culinary passion he inherited as a teenager from his hippie father. In his debut, Mincemeat: The Education of an Italian Chef, Lucarelli teaches us that even among rogues and misfits, there is a moral code in the kitchen that must, above all else, always be upheld.