Customer Reviews

On the Line

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

ATTENTION: if you are a big fan of 30 Minute Meals or Semi-homemade Cooking, this is not a book for you. If you only go to chain restaurants that call each location a "store," this is not a book for you. If you're the sort of person for whom food is akin to fuel and you don't view eating as an aesthetic experience, this is not a book for you.

Who IS this book for, then?

1) Armchair chefs
Fans of inside-the-restaurant-business books, such as Kitchen Confidential (Bourdain) and The Soul of a Chef (Ruhlman), will enjoy reading about the history and personalities behind Le Bernardin. On The Line is written in a very matter of fact style though, so don't expect anything like the gonzo rants of Bourdain or the hushed and reverential tone of Ruhlman.

2) Anybody interested in how a top-end restaurant operates
Most of On The Line is devoted to an in-depth discussion of the daily operations at Le Bernardin. Comprehensive descriptions of each kitchen station, detailed run downs of how dishes are prepared during service, and a fascinating overview of the business side are highlights of the book. And unlike most books written by chefs, the focus is on the entire restaurant staff, not just the chef, which helps reinforce how running a restaurant is truly a team effort.

3) Accomplished or ambitious home cooks
While On The Line includes a selection of recipes, they are aspirational in that they are scaled down renditions of highly refined and luxurious restaurant cooking. As in The French Laundry Cookbook, one needs access to premium ingredients and a solid repertoire of cooking skills to replicate the dishes successfully.

Bottom line: On The Line is a fascinating and realistic look into the world of running a top restaurant, with the bonus of recipes for actual dishes served at Le Bernardin. Don't expect any flashy writing or chef worship talk though. Four stars, with the caveat that this isn't a book for beginning cooks or those who don't enjoy eating at destination restaurants.

------
Complementary books:
Garlic and Sapphires (Reichl)--the high end restaurant experience from a restaurant reviewer's perspective.
Down and Out in Paris and London (Orwell)--a funny and shocking exposé of what really goes on in hotel and restaurant kitchens, but NOT from the chef's point of view!

Because it is not simply a cookbook, there are two good reasons to buy this book. The first, because half the book contains recipes, is because you want to learn how to make some of Le Bernardin's famous dishes. The second is because you are curious how a top restaurant staff makes and serves its food. For either or both of those reasons, this is a fascinating book.

I got the book for the second reason. I love reality cooking shows like Top Chef and Hells's Kitchen for the look they provide inside the world of a restaurant chef. I always wonder what it would be like to cook at that level. After reading the book, I can see those TV programs barely scratch the surface. The reality of cooking and serving food of top restaurant quality is so much more involved and labor-intensive than I dreamed it would be.

Le Bernardin is a famous restaurant in New York City that has achieved a 4 star rating from the New York Times and a 3 star (out of 3 tops) Michelin rating. Eric Ripert is the chef and part owner. The restaurant opened while I was living in NYC, but I never ate there. From the name I guessed it was a fancy French restaurant and assumed the menu was full of classic French food (whatever that might be). In fact, the menu is almost exclusively fish and seafood and the recipes are inventive and unusual.

Most of the first half of the book is about the restaurant, starting with the history of both the restaurant and chef Ripert. The next part is about the kitchen, starting with an overview of the various cooks' roles, the kitchen layout and stations, and a glossary of "cook speak." Then there are sections on various roles in the kitchen: the chef de cuisine, the executive sous chef, the saucier (who, as the name implies, makes the sauces), the porter, and the pastry chef. There is a section on how they create new dishes and a description of a night on the line. Despite a large staff, all the cooks and chefs work longer and harder than I ever imagined!

The third part is about the dining experience at Le Bernadin. This part is about the service. It takes an army of waiters and captains to deliver food to the diners and make sure they have a 4 star dining experience. The fourth part is about the business aspect of the restaurant.

The fifth part, and the last half of the book, contains almost 50 of Chef Ripert's favorite recipes. These are not for the beginning cook! None of them are completely beyond a cook who is willing to put in the work, but to make the dishes up to Le Bernadin's standard you'd need a source of absolutely fresh and, in some cases, sushi grade fish and other seafood. It also might help to have help in the kitchen.

There are recipes for cold appetizers, warm appetizers, entrees, and desserts. The recipes give fairly detailed instructions on plating the dishes as well as preparing them. The photos of approximately half of these recipes show exactly what they look like when prepared by the Le Bernardin chefs. The food is visually beautiful; some of the dishes look like little works of art. As far as taste, the combination of ingredients (particularly in the sauces) is like no other fish recipes I have seen.

I am particularly impressed by the photography in this book. In addition to the beautiful photographs of the prepared food, the section on the fish has amazing photography that makes the fish look like they are swimming. Simply gorgeous.

I doubt I will try any of the recipes; my cooking skills are not that developed and it is more difficult to get super fresh fish here in the Midwest. But I was completely fascinated by the descriptions of how a restaurant like Le Bernardin works and what cooking in its kitchen is like. I loved reading it from beginning to end!

Have you ever wanted to shadow a chef for a day? Have you ever wondered exactly what goes on in the kitchen and what they keep on hand? Ever wonder in painful detail how a fine dinning restaurant is run?

If you said yes to at least two of these questions, you will like this book. If you failed to answer yes to any of them, then move on to a different book.

As a normal read for a food network/Hell's Kitchen fan, this was painfully boring and dull. I was looking for juicy stories about the staff, the customers and cooking. Instead I got what seems to be a record of how one restaurant is run--in such detail it seems like an employee manual or time capsule in case everyone quit and it needed to be re-created from scratch.

So why did I give it 4 stars? Because it actually delivers what is tells you it will. My issues were more because of what I THOUGHT the book would be like and less with what it actually is. One of the Amazon "Tag Suggestions" is restaurant management--something I 100% agree this book with provide at least some background into--but for the normal consumer, look for something you will really enjoy more than this dry manual like book.

I recently acquired a copy of this book and found it a tantalizingly unique approach to the genre of 'restaurant cookbook'. Why ? Because it is about the care and tendering of a restaurant -Le Bernadin - which author ( and Executive Chef and co-owner ) Eric Ripert so clearly loves and fusses over like a lover.

It is not, like so many other celebrity chefs books, about the chef or his ego or his prowess or his food 'enlightenment', but refreshingly, about the impeccably demanding and non-stop daily efforts that owners Maguy LeCose and Eric Ripert demand of themselves and their staff in order to keep this high-maintenance restaurant operating at top level.

It is also a behind the scenes look at the hectic yet controlled and precise daily operations of a restaurant of this caliber located in the most hectic of American cities, New York City. As readers, we become privy to information such as the staff hierarchy in the kitchen and dining room, the slang-uage of the kitchen, and to the job of the porter, the person in charge of food deliveries.

In a restaurant world filled with 'good-enough', un-skilled and un-trained cooks and slacking standards ( i.e. the type of dreadful restaurants that Gordon Ramsey wrangles with on his television program Kitchen Nightmares ) it is refreshing to peer into the inner workings of a Eurocentric, Michelin star-rated establishment that constantly polishes its dedication to excellence and the discipline of cooking. Be reassured that here, everything is as it should be.

Here, the rewards and successes of the restaurant come from the hard work and personal values of LeCose and Ripert, and it is apparent from reading this book that they fully understand ( and thrive on ) the yin and yang relationship these concepts have one to another. Underneath the posh glamour of Le Bernadin is an old-school French restaurant, meaning that emphasis is directed towards sourcing the best-quality fresh products no matter the cost, and placing experienced and skilled chefs and sous chefs in the kitchen to assist the on-site Executive Chef/Owner in his desire to please restaurant patrons with beautiful, well-prepared food. ( Note: the word on-site is important here - many celebrity chefs are rightly criticized for their blatant absence from their restaurant kitchens).

This book is significantly different in tone and style from the previous book written by Maguey Le Coze and Eric Ripert titled: Le Bernadin Cookbook: Four-Star Simplicity, (Doubleday, 1998). Where Four-Star features more lavish plating and big gestures, the recipes in On The Line are spare, pared down to precise embellishments used in restrained quantities, which allows the star of the dish - the fish or shellfish - to hold center court.

For the record, let me say here that I have never dined at this restaurant nor do I know either of the two owners. So, with book in hand I made several dishes from this book and was impressed with the results. Each recipe has many parts - sauces, emulsions, flavored broths, garnishes, etc - that comprise the final dish. While the recipes are not difficult, they are a bit fussy and time-comsuming for home cooks who do not have a mis en place of these necessary foundation elements on hand the way that the Le Bernadin kitchen does.

But this is not as much a complaint as it is an observation. For example, I am sure that pureeing the sugar snap peas, green peas, and mint in three separate steps (as is called for in the Sweet Pea-Wasabi Sauce in the Salmon recipe on page 202 ) is a cinch when a reasonable quantity of sauce is made in the restaurant kitchen each night the dish appears on the menu. But for home cooks, the recipe calls for using such small quantities that I had to put all of these ingredients together in my blender just to have enough material in there for my blender to, well, blend.

Which recipes did I choose ?

Crab, inspired by Peruvian Causa: layered crab, avocado, and potaotes spiced with yellow Aji Amarillo pepper sauce

Scallops: ultra-rare charred sea scallops with smoked sea salt ( I used our fantastic Japanese Iburi-Jio smoked sea salt )

Salmon: barely cooked wild Alaskan salmon with daikon, snow peas, enoki salad and sweet-pea wasabi sauce

Banana: banana creme brulee, citrus-pistachio biscuit and beurre noisette ice cream with peanut caramel

All of these recipes were lovely- each dish had layers of flavor and a well-balanced complexity that one imagines is the signature of a Le Bernadin dish. Nevertheless, my favorite was the crab dish, followed by the scallops. The crab was fun to construct and was very jazzy looking ( I wish there had been a picture of the Le Bernadin version in the book ). Several components of the dish - the onion relish, the potatos, and the pepper sauce are tasty mini-recipes that I will certainly put to use in many other dishes.

To see a photo of my finished dish, please visit my blog: An Educated Palate

I served the dish with a nicely chilled, crisp 2007 Sepp Moser Gruner Veltliner, a good counterpoint to the unctousness of the crab and avocado and the spicy bite of the aji amarillo pepper.

Eric Ripert is one of the most celebrated chefs in New York City. He's the man at the helm of New York's Le Bernadin, one of the city's most highly regarded restaurants. He hangs with the likes of Anthony Bourdain and his credentials certainly make him more than qualified to write a book about cooking and the restaurant business. This book is a beautiful love letter to the restaurant industry and specifically, Le Bernadin. We get to see how the kitchen is set up, how the tables are stationed, the 129 things that floor staff should never do, and the list goes on. You really get a feel for how this place works and it is quite impressive. In addition to the well written account of all thing Le Bernadin, you also get a nice selection of recipes from the fabled restaurant, though so many are a bit outside the realm of reality for those untrained as Chefs. A stunning, beautifully designed book that should prove interesting both to those in the industry and people that want to know more about it. Though Ripert's writing style isn't nearly as engaging as Anthony Bourdain's, this is definitely a very rewarding read even if it might seem like bit of a PR piece for Le Bernadin. As a huge bonus, the latter half of this book consists of many recipes from Le Bernadin's seafood heavy menu. The items sound fantastic, though sometimes a bit too challenging for the novice to attempt. A great book cover to cover.

I've always been interested in the business side of running a restaurant, and this looked like it would be an interesting read. It's not a "gossipy" or "tell all" type of book, but rather a clear, detailed examination of what it takes to actually run a large, up-scale restaurant. Fans of books such as "Kitchen Confidential" may be disappointed, but if you're interested in what goes into getting that plate from the kitchen to the table, this is a fantastic exploration of an astonishingly complex business.

What I found most enjoyable were the lists -- they breakout what is actually ordered on a daily/ongoing basis, how many meals are prepared, the specific time line for preparation, and many other metrics, including what staff are expected to do (and not do). This may seem at first glance to be boring, but it's presented in a way that makes it quite interesting and eye-opening.

The photography is an added bonus -- gorgeous shots of what must be spectacularly delicious entrees, appetizers, and desserts. Yes, we're talking food porn of the highest quality.

My only complaint is the typography. Granted, my eyes aren't as young as they used to be, but I found the small type a challenge to read, especially when the background was colored. Throw us aging boomers a bone, publishers - kick up the point size a bit!

Dishes are also explored not only from the pragmatic assembly/cooking point of view, but the conceptual as well -- what the chef was striving for when assembling the ingredients.

On the Line is a difficult book to review, because it is never sure whether it wants to be a behind the scenes tell-all or a picturesque cook book. The book attempts to do both, and succeeds in many ways, but trying to do both it does not succeed at either goal.

The behind the scenes tell-all books about restaurant kitchens became really interesting when Anthony Bourdain wrote Kitchen Confidential, which he has successfully translated into a TV show and celebrity status. While on the line does not delve into the personal lives of the cooks and staff at the restaurant, we do see a lot of the behind the scenes work that is required to run a restaurant. From this perspective I would have enjoyed learning more about the economics of the restaurant business - how to create great food and still make money, how to ensure that people are aware of your restaurant and the necessary marketing involved. There wasn't as much discussion about these topics as I would have expected.

The book also contains a number of recipes for dishes served at the restaurant, many of which look exceptionally tempting. Some of these appear a bit difficult or include ingredients that might be difficult to acquire unless one lives very near a thriving seafood market. Again, the recipes fall a bit flat, although they are well presented and some of the presentation of the food and the pictures are very appealing.

After all is said and done, the behind the scenes material is interesting but does not dig deeply enough or broadly enough to be satisfying, while the recipes offer a delectable but difficult menu. I think the author would have been better served with a more conventional approach - either a tell-all or a cook book, but has tried mightly to deliver both in one book. What he has given us are two delectable appetizers that ultimately don't satisfy.

This is without a doubt one of the very best looks inside a restaurant, in this case the Michelin rated Le Bernardin in New York City. Like many a cookbook, it is the tale of the early efforts of the founders (in this case a brother and sister who had a modest bistro in Paris), their successes (positive reviews led to American patrons), their move to a New York stage. And then young chef Eric Ripert enters, to take over, and build upon these successes to create what is generally regarded as the best seafood-centered restaurant in New York.
And like many other celebrity chefs, Ripert provides recipes and insights into what goes upon the plate. For that alone, this would be a worthwhile acquisition for any serious cook.
But what sets this book apart from the long list of "name" chef books in recent years are the many sidebar pieces and profiles of the people who contribute to the daily operation of a successful restaurant. We meet the porter who arrives to inspect the daily deliveries of produce, fish, and meats (including amounts and prices). The dishwashers who labor behind the scenes to wash the pots, pans, fine china, and crystal. The sommelier, the host, the servers, the many kitchen stations, chefs, apprentices, and specialists who all play a role in meal preparation.
We are shown the floor plan for the many cooking stations, refrigerators, ovens, etc., that come into play to prepare your meal.
There is even an minute by minute breakdown of several of the functions, to show how this is a coordinated effort aimed at providing a great meal, to each and every customer.
There are many cookbooks and many alleged insiders guides to the heart of a chef; but On the Line is easily the most thorough portrayal of all that goes into making a great restaurant work like Le Benardin.
Four Stars, Worth a Detour.

An annual selection of numerous critical sources as one of the premier American restaurants, Le Bernardin in Manhattan has retained its lofty status for the most part because of its chef and part owner Eric Ripert, who co-authors this engaging documentary view depicting the inner workings of the establishment. It is generously illustrated with 150 black and white as well as colour photographs of the restaurant, its personnel, its history, and that of its founders, in addition to enormously appealing reproductions of about 50 recipes as served. The first segment of the work describes how Le Bernardin came into existence, while each page is savoury with gastronomic insight. Among the specialized functions of the restaurant's crew that are described in some detail we find included those of the Chef de Cuisine, Sous-Chef, Saucier, Fish Butcher, Porter, Pastry Chef, and the Maître d'. There is a wealth of fascinating data included within the work such as: a Dictionary of Kitchen Slang, a Glossary to Decode the Language of the Kitchen, a List of 129 Cardinal Sins To Be Avoided By Personnel, and even How to Fold a Madeleine Napkin, all of this being but a small part of what is a minute accounting of one representative day and evening at Le Bernardin. Chefs, cooks, waitstaff, and porters were interviewed by Ripert along with collaborator Christine Muhlke, and there is no page that will be less than pleasing to a reader. This will come as no surprise to those who are knowledgeable of Ripert through his media exposure upon PBS and also from his Internet blog, Avec Eric. For those to whom Ripert and Le Bernardin are unknown, this book provides an opportunity to discover precisely how a truly first-class restaurant functions.

Fans of the food network especially will get lost in this behind--the-scences look at a successful 4-star restaurant that has maintained its exalted position for years. Not an easy task, considering the competition, changes in food fashion, and economic ups and downs. blessed with imagination and good taste, an extraordinary attention to detail (see in particular pp 126-127), Chef Ripert is generous with his information and especially with his recipes. This handsome book would be a welcome addition for anyone who loves reading about fine dining even if the actual experience is beyond their reach. A great gift idea.