The Fourth Star: Dispatches from Inside Daniel Boulud's Celebrated New York Restaurant [Hardcover]

Leslie Brenner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 11, 2002

For foodies, restaurant fans and restaurant workers, chefs and chef-wannabes, and for everyone who devoured Kitchen Confidential, here is a revealing look at what goes on behind the scenes at the world-renowned Restaurant Daniel as chef/owner Daniel Boulud strives for perfection–and for the New York Times’ top four-star rating.

The hushed, elegant atmosphere of a fine restaurant often conceals an intensely stressful workplace where highly trained, underpaid staffers work backbreaking hours against impossible dead-lines, often at the whim of a driven and demanding yet creatively gifted boss. New York’s Restaurant Daniel is one such place. With the complete cooperation of Chef Daniel Boulud, author Leslie Brenner spent a full year at the restaurant, getting to know the staff in the kitchen, the front of the house, and the manager’s office. And she reports on it all with a vivid immediacy: the maître d’ shuffling reservations when a VIP shows up unannounced, the young pastry chef who gets passed over for a promotion (and then gets the last laugh), even the financial arrangements that keep the restaurant’s doors open for business. And underlying all the daily drama is Chef Boulud’s obsession with getting a fourth star from the New York Times.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Daniel Boulud's Manhattan restaurant, Daniel, is considered one of the nation's top dining spots. But in 1999, New York Times restaurant reviewer William Grimes demoted Daniel from its lofty four-star status to a merely "excellent" three stars. Leslie Brenner's The Fourth Star recounts her self-assigned year behind the scenes at Daniel, at the end of which Grimes returned the coveted star. Her fascinating fly-on-the-wall narrative takes readers to the restaurant's two arenas: the front of the house, a world of demanding patrons and equally exacting staff, who try to accommodate guests while ensuring the smooth coordination of operations; and the world behind the swinging doors, a roiling place in which tension is both staved off and cultivated by barking chefs--including Boulud--but which nonetheless (or consequently) produces world-class food.

Brenner takes readers everywhere: to the reservations desk and its crew's VIP-seating machinations; to staff meetings; to a wine-buying session; to a visit from President Clinton (who is allergic, it's noted, to chocolate); and, primarily, to the kitchen, where "the work is really hard and someone else takes all the credit" and burnout means that cooks, most in their 20s, stay an average of a year. This is all great stuff, and Brenner is particularly, almost amazingly, good at getting it all down to the last crème brûlée. Unfortunately, the book is compromised by the author's near-sycophantic regard for Boulud (his "genius is readily apparent," is a typical observation) and the restaurant, whose "wondrousness" is presented as a given. Thus the narrative, which is also (perhaps unavoidably) repetitive, often feels like an infomercial. Hanging her tale on the wish for the fourth star also plays Brenner false, as the issue is largely unmentioned or otherwise expressed by the cast of characters, leading Brenner to interject leading comments ("Could [Boulud] have missed his moment in the eyes of the critic whose judgment matters most?") that only salute the lack of narrative tension. These things said, the book is still a must-read for anyone interested in the workings of a top-drawer restaurant at the peak of its powers, and of the amazing hierarchical dramas, front of the house and back, that make it what it is. --Arthur Boehm

From Booklist

Reporter Brenner spent a year in New York's elegant restaurant Daniel as its staff labored together to earn a coveted fourth star from the New York Times' powerful restaurant critic. Brenner's microscopic account of the dining room staff, the chefs, and the restaurant's patrons makes fascinating reading for foodies, who will virtually drool over dinner items such as ravioli stuffed with artichokes and arugula or risotto gazpacho. Brenner's vivid descriptive powers come to the fore to relate the professional and personal successes and setbacks of many of the kitchen staff, from the brilliant, charismatic chef-owner, Daniel Boulud, to the line cooks and even the oft-ignored busboys. In each aspect of this eating establishment, detail is everything. Brenner's account of how the restaurant takes (and refuses) reservations offers many an object lesson for anyone striving to do public service right. Consummately professional reservationists even smile as they talk on the telephone because they believe that a smile can be "heard" across the phone lines. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter; 1 edition (June 11, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609608088
• ISBN-13: 978-0609608081
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,547,590 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Our Pate, which Art on Table, August 19, 2003

By 

Avid Reader (Franklin, Tn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fourth Star: Dispatches from Inside Daniel Boulud's Celebrated New York Restaurant (Hardcover)

This is a book by and for foodies. As such it is filled with a lingo that may require some translation for the uninitiated. Even so, it is both an intriguing tale (how he got the fourth star) even as it contains some of the best behind-the-scenes restaurant action ever written.

One grasps the passion, the obsession, the degree to which the performers immerse themselves in every aspect of food from both the "business" end (running a restaurant) and the "artistic" end (selecting, preparing, cooking). Just reading through one of those hectic nights is exhausting but the author seems to have been in the pits with the major players. The outtake vignettes such as the episode on making reservations or on the quirky but faithful customers are sheer joy.

And who has not imagined such a dinner as the one that finally concluded the book. Bravo for such an effort as this one!

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting topic, content a bit low, July 24, 2002

By 

gfweb "gfweb" (pa USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Fourth Star: Dispatches from Inside Daniel Boulud's Celebrated New York Restaurant (Hardcover)

The premise of this book is a year in the life of a great restaurant at a time when the pressure is on to get a fourth star from the NYT food critic. Sounds pretty good, huh? Well, it really isn't.

Good things can be found here; for example culinary nuggets scattered through the book about how to cook bacon, prepare citrus zest etc are interesting and useful. A glimpse at the business side of the restaurant is novel but underdeveloped.

My major criticisms are three...I didn't get to know Daniel Boulud at all. Many opportunities to flesh him out were missed...there are a zillion frequently seen people in the kitchen, but most are so undeveloped that I couldn't keep 'em straight....There is far too much random kitchen chatter reproduced. It is mostly a distraction and is thoroughly boring. "Fire 35...merde! zut alors! putain!"

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars for The Fourth Star, July 5, 2002

By 

Julie P. (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fourth Star: Dispatches from Inside Daniel Boulud's Celebrated New York Restaurant (Hardcover)

I loved this book--and I'm not even a "foodie!" The Fourth Star reads like a well-crafted novel, with great characters, intricate relationships, and delicious tidbits about who gets what table, about the frenzied goings-on behind the kitchen door, and about what it's like when the President of the United States shows up at your restaurant for a meal. It's full of information I never realized I wantd to know, such as where the staff buys their stylish but extra-comfortable shoes, what the restaurant mark-up is on a bottle of water, how the timing works so that all the entrees arrive at the table at the same time, and just what goes into making a sublime dish. It's a fascinating read. I'd recommend this book to anyone.