Customer Reviews

Hot and Hot Fish Club Cookbook: A Celebration of Food, Family, and Traditions

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My sister (who has lived in Montgomery AL for many years), gave me this book as a Christmas gift. It warmed my upstate New York winter! I love the philosophy, the linkage to history, the stories, the emphasis on local food and farmers, and the recipes. I even learned that I could make use of honeysuckle blossoms!

Two different books served up together. The first section is a pretty coffee table production with highly complicated recipes in the Bradley Ogden tradition that most home cooks will avoid as too difficult; and with personal reminiscences, mostly by the chef's wife, which most readers will skip as too personal. The second section contains almost all the meat -- practical information anyone interested in starting a restaurant can use, some of great interest to the home cook, including a list of purveyors who handle high quality foodstuffs. It is in this second section that the fingerprints of the chef and his staff are found, and it's by far the most valuable part of the book, but suffers from a layout so ugly that it takes a little courage to read. There's a fine book lurking in here, but it would take a good editor to bring it out.