“Back of the House,” my book about who in their right mind would work in a restaurant, was a romp through a good number of kitchens. Most of the time was spent at one place with one chef in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and readers were also shown the goings on in NYC with Drew Nieporent, Daniel Boulud, David Pasternack, Daniel Humm, Andrew Carmellini, and Thomas Keller.
I took to the road with the book: The Institute of Culinary Education, The National Restaurant Association, Johnson & Wales, Harvard Bookstore, The Coop, and so on.
The book sells at AMAZON and elsewhere, and now that it’s out and about I’m busy on a raw work about family and food.
It’s convenient to find a local subject to write about: Commuting to NYC for a book was something I did when I helped Silvano Marchetto write his cookbook, and while that had its many, many pleasures, the back and forth wasn’t easy.
In retrospect, nonetheless, there is something to be said for patience, and had I chosen to work with a NY chef on the psychology of running a restaurant it’s likely that conviviality would have emerged as a theme.
