Customer Reviews

Restaurant Favorites at Home: Part of "The Best Recipe" Series

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I wasn't expecting to enjoy this book so much. I was anticipating recipes from the kinds of restaurants I eat out in frequently, which are in my price range, and still prepare foods I don't often do at home. But the restaurants represented in THIS book are the extremely pricey, cutting-edge, wait-for-days-for-reservations places that I rarely can afford. These restaurants have incredible food. So I haven't even been able to taste a wide range of dishes in this unique category, let alone prepare them at home. A diverse group of people in the high-end food industry were polled to find the recipes that people ordered again and again. The editors pared 750 suggestions down to 150, with the chefs generously contributing their recipes for inclusion.

These are indeed things you could not cook at home. In this volume it takes more than the average amount of Cook's Illustrated tweaking to make the recipes accessible to the home cook. (Christopher Kimball noted in his preface that this project was more work than he had expected, and it's easy to see why.) But they don't stop until every problem is solved.

And the food!! I have made several of these recipes, and they are sublime. I have dog-eared dozens more pages with additional dishes I want to try. Each dish represents the particular vision of the chef who created it. Sometimes we think food like this it too weired for the average person to enjoy, but this is not the case. Everyone who tried my dishes to loved them, including children.

I assumed this book would contain recipes for classic dishes commonly found at restaurants. That is not the case. This book contains adaptations of unusual and imaginative dishes by world-class chefs. I was hoping for something simpler, closer to my level. More advanced gourmet cooks will appreciate this book more.

Somehow, I feel this book has not received its due credit or attention. As someone who is very familiar with Cook's Illustrated, I am very surprised that this book did not become one of their top sellers. Perhaps because it is somewhat of a departure from what Cook's Illustrated normally does that people have not been able to truly embrace its concept? I must say that even I was surprised that they set out on such an undertaking with this book, especially since their founder, Christopher Kimball, is a self-proclaimed loather of all foods fancy. But after the tremendous success I have had with the amazing recipes from this book, I am so thankful they ventured into restaurant quality territory.

Before I go on, let me first say that this is probably not a book for the uninitiated. If you are a beginner cook, I strongly urge you to start out with Cook's Illustrated "The New Best Recipe" cookbook. There is a wealth of information and techniques to be learned from this all-encompassing cookbook (the "Bible" to us Cook's Illustrated fans) and you will be better served to learn the fundamentals of cooking and baking before you try most of the recipes from "Restaurant Favorites". However, if you are a seasoned cook looking for delicious, foolproof recipes with the wow factor of a four star restaurant, then you have hit the jackpot with this book!

How CI approached this venture is they contacted scores of food editors from all over the country and asked them what dishes from their favorite restaurants they would most like to recreate at home. They then asked the chefs of those restaurants to share their recipes. In typical CI fashion, they took those recipes into the test kitchen and exhaustively tested them until they came up with a version that would translate into the home kitchen. Most high end restaurants use hard to obtain ingredients, difficult techniques, and have expensive equipment not normally found in home kitchens. They also have sous chefs on hand to help with lengthy preparation and dishwashers to clean their mountains of dishes. We home cooks are not afforded these luxuries. With this in mind, CI set out to transform these recipes into something the home cook could feasibly do at home, while still maintaining the integrity of the original dishes. They substituted expensive, hard to find ingredients with ones available to most home cooks, they simplified techniques, and they streamlined recipes to shorten preparation and cooking times. But all the while, they maintained the genius and drama of four star restaurant cooking. For those of us looking for ways to add new flavors and flair to our dishes without having to take expensive cooking classes, this book is like a gift from heaven!

There is a diverse array of recipes contained within, from the striking beauty and flavor of their "Crab Towers with Avocado and Gazpacho Salsas" to the homey flavors of their "Braised Short Ribs with Creamy Polenta". You will most likely find something to prepare for whichever occasion you choose. The recipes included run the gamut from first courses (appetizers, soups and salads), main courses (vegetarian, poultry, meat and seafood), side dishes and desserts. While this book may be a departure from what Cook's Illustrated normally does, you can still find elements that you have come to expect from them. Like product and equipment ratings, illustrations of techniques, and helpful tidbits that are scattered throughout the book. And like all other CI cookbooks, every recipe comes with a detailed write-up of their experiences in the test kitchen...how they arrived at the final version of the recipes, what lessons were learned in their undertaking, etc. As always, the good people at CI are not only recipe writers, but educators as well.

I cannot recommend this book enough to people who are looking for new and exciting recipes to wow their family and friends. You will be surprised at how doable all these recipes are, and you will be taking your cooking and entertaining to a whole new level. I do admit that I tend to use this cookbook more for entertaining than I do for every day cooking. While there are certainly recipes that you can make for weeknight meals (Tortilla Soup, Greek Salad, Jambalaya, German Pot Roast), more of them have that restaurant flair that seems more appropriate for dinner parties, holidays and special occasions than a Tuesday night in front of the television. But one thing's for certain, every recipe that I tried not only looked beautiful but tasted as good as or better than anything I've ever had in a high end restaurant. I can't thank Cook's Illustrated enough for this book. I've never thought I would be able to cook like this with such minimal effort!

If you are looking to elevate your cooking to an all new high, then you will definitely want this book on your shelf. You owe it to your inner chef to give it a try. :-)

It really hurts giving a weak rating to a Cooks Illustrated book. The America's Test Kitchen crew is one of the most overachieving organizations in the culinary world, turning out magazine, cookbooks, and a TV show at a furious pace, and all the while serving as the oracle of record for all things culinary. By itself, this is an excellent book, with excellent interpretations of normally-inaccessible restaurant dishes for the home cook. But it seems to lie outside what Cooks Illustrated does best; their usual methodical approach is muted here, though not nonexistent.

The selection of recipes is a good one -- lots of New American, kicked-up ethnic (including Anthony Bourdain's Cassoulet from Les Halles), innovative twists like "Green Eggs and Ham" (Seuss-inspired -- eggs in an herb sauce), and some flat-out four-star stuff that nobody would ever think to do in a home kitchen. The usual sidebars with product reviews and food tastings are there, as well (though seemingly in smaller-than-usual quantity), and there's even a short section on restaurant presentation. But... there's something missing.

On the one hand, the ATK crew could have gone even deeper, exploring the basics of restaurant cuisine and how to adapt its techniques to the home kitchen. Complex, yes, but a lot of fun. On the other hand, they could have pulled out a straight Todd Wilbur impression, then going one better and talking with the chefs about the origins of the dishes and the restaurants they come from. But Cooks Illustrated sent this one straight down the middle, creating something that doesn't quite fit either genre of cookbook. It doesn't, after all, feel like a Cooks Illustrated book with its interlocking technical commentary, nor does it satisfy as French Laundry-style food porn.

This doesn't mean I don't recommend it -- if you're bored with the usual, this book still does a good job despite its shortcomings, and the recipes sound truly delicious. But it's a diversion from the usual, and an awkwardly handled one at that. Know what you're getting into beforehand and you won't be disappointed.

EDIT 2010: While this book is definitely outside the normal ATK mission statement and it isn't a regular thing in my cookbook reading, I've come to appreciate it on its own merits years later as a fun diversion, and it's a shame that they've let it go out of print. Given some of the lightweight stuff they've come out with since running out the string on the Best Recipe series, this is definitely far better than I gave it credit for originally. Upgrade to four stars.

This book fills an important niche. My rating is predicated on understanding just what that niche is. If you don't understand the niche, then you may not like the book.

There is a genre of "gourmet cookbooks" by the likes of Charlie Trotter, Craig von Foerester, Thomas Keller, etc. that discuss how to make the food that is actually served in their world-class restaurants, using the finest ingredients and having a fully-equipped restaurant kitchen at one's disposal. These books appeal to what I would call "chef hobbyists" -- people with an extraordinary interest in cooking, and have the equipment and access to ingredients that this kind of cooking requires.

Then there is the niche filled by the Cooks Illustrated series of cookbooks, focusing on more-or-less everyday meals, but analyzing all the ingredients and techniques in depth, and explaining to the reader what works, what does not, and why.

This book fits squarely in the middle of these two genres - the book gives clear explanations of ingredients and techniques, and discusses how the recipe differs from the original restaurant recipe and why, but the focus is clearly on the fine dining experience rather than everyday dinner preparation. It is essentially a bridge between ordinary food preparation, and the vastly more ambitious preparations of the celeberty chefs.

The clear explanations enable the aspiring chef to move the recipes back in the restaurant direction when availability of ingredients so inspires. This book might recommend substituting canned diced tomatoes for the original tomato concasse, and this substitution is certainly reasonable if all you have is off-season supermarket tomatoes, but if you have fresh tomatoes in your garden, hey, start choppin'. If you understand why the substitutions were made you can also understand when to substitute the other way.

All the recipes are thoroughly researched and edited, and there are few if any mistakes. Therefore, you don't need a huge experience base to spot things that just won't work, like sometimes happens with the celeberty chef gourmet books. If you just follow the recipe, you'll get good results, and because things are very well explained, you'll start building up that experience base.

Most of the celeberty gourmet cookbooks have extensive high-quality professional photography to help you get the presentation ideas right. This book does not have very much in that area, and leaves you more to your own devices. This is probably OK, since I think most chef hobbyists get interested in fancy presentation when they reach more advanced levels.

Just as you would expect from Cooks Illustrated, there are frequent sidebars discussing things like "what's the best brand of truffle oil" or tests of different mandolines.

Like all the Cook's Illustrated books, this book offers the opportunity for a great learning experience. If you want to start moving up from just making dinner to impressing your friends and family with a fine dining experience, this book is definitely the reference that you're looking for.

This book is something of a departure for CI, which shows in the sales for this book...and the fact it's no great feat finding one remaindered for under $5.

Too many of the usual CI readership had a mistaken notion of what "restaurant favorites" meant, I suspect, and thumbing through the pages only to find high-end FOODIE-food put them off.

Make no mistake, this is FOODIE food. Not "good food," not "delicious food" and certainly not "comfort food." This is food for people who have a good idea who Marco Pierre White is, or Tom Keller, or Eric Ripert. If you consider five-star food to be "fussy looking" or "too much busy-ness on a plate" you may not be the target audience for this book. If you are not among these foodie sorts, then you would probably be best advised to give this book a good hard look before purchasing. Mind you, it may be that you'd still want to buy a copy, but at least your eyes would be open. Otherwise, I think you'd be best advised to stick to other CI tomes.

Also, even if you were a hardcore foodie who knows his Rockenwagners from his Vongerichtens, this food is pretty much NOT weekday dinner stuff. It's a whole lot less effort that the original recipes coming from chefs with brigades of line cooks, dishwashers and professional equipment...but it's not the sort of stuff you can reasonably be expected to crank out in 45 minutes. This is dinner party fare. Yes, there's no getting around it, this is pretty fancy stuff. Which may not be your style. Which is fine.

This all said, the recipes work pretty flawlessly -- the Jambalaya being the only one for which I didn't care, mostly because it was a seafood stew with rice on the side and not what anyone would remotely consider a Jambalaya -- and lend themselves to ring molds and squirt bottle squigglies and the like.

The only real gripe I have is with the appalling lack of photographs. I can kinda/sorta/maybe let it go in other CI books, but in one that is supposed to be about fancier-than-usual food, more visual guidance (especially on matters of plating things) would have been welcome. That's why I knocked off the star. (The corn and shrimp torta had me racking my brain for a good long while as I tried to visualize how this was supposed to proceed.) Not only that, the recipes are precisely the sort of recipes you associate with foodporn...so the lack of color photos was a downer.

In sum, expect frou-frou edibles and not weeknight classics. Expect streamlined and foolproof recipes, but no visual cues. If you buy it from Amazon's marketplace, you can be sure it's a bargain.

As I look over the last few issues of CI it's hard to get excited about yet another roast chicken or brownie recipe. Now that they've tackled just about every 'classic' recipe, they seem to be stuck in something of a rut. But having a look through the Restaurant Favorites' book, there's all sorts of amazing looking dishes to get excited about trying. As usual, CI applies their rigorous testing and streamlining to provide a detailed and reliable recipe. Here's hoping the magazine decides to swing towards more exciting food like this.

I waited a long time for this book. I toyed with the thought that I'd never want to make restaurant dishes because they were too complicated. I read some of the reviews and figured I didn't need the book. In the end, I'm glad I own it.

This book does a great job of adapting a wide range of upscale (I live in Chicago and I'm praying a media rep will take me to Tru so I won't have to pay for it) recipes for home use. This book gives you less of the classic Cooks Illustrated methodology. However, the pre-recipe info is dedicated to how great the original recipe is and how the new recipe was adapted from the original.

Devotees of CI are used to in-depth explanations of the problems with a particular dish, why those problems occur and the food science of a perfect solution. I think the former is a valid approach for a restaurant book. I guess the thought is that if you're tackling this book, you're more than a novice cook and have an understanding of the food science basics.

The range of recipes in this book is fantastic! Kudos to the team for the effort. There are 150 recipes divided among:
-appetizers, soups & salads
-main courses (my complaint here is that the poultry section is very light -- only four recipes. However there is a decent number of vegetarian, fish and seafood recipes.)
-side dishes (divided into stand-alone sides and those that accompany the main courses)
-desserts

My second complaint, and truly why I'm giving this four instead of five stars, is the small number of photos. To be fair, this is characteristic of Cooks Illustrated. With presentation being integral to a good restaurant experience, I expected more color photos of the finished dishes. Including the cover, there are 17 color photos. To be honest, I wanted a photo of every dish.

I was really hoping this book would have recipes that would be restaurant classics that I enjoy. I was hoping for how to make a fabulous French Dip, how to make baked potatoes incased in salt. This book contains recipes from high end restaurants that I do not typically visit on a daily basis.

While high end restaurant recipes is not all bad, it really doesn't cover the dining that we typically do everyday. Now, with that being said, the recipes that are in the book are good, and very original. These aren't the type of recipes that you are going to cook when you are coming home from work, but these are the recipes that you want to spend time with on the weekend and serve with a bottle of wine.

Some additional benefits of this book is that is shows you how to make perfect pan-seared tuna steaks. Cook's Illustrated also spends time talking about ingredients, and helps you make better choices. I do appreciate these tips, because if I am purchasing higher end ingredients, I want my results to turn out well. Overall I found this book to be a bit disappointing in the direction that was chosen, I was hoping for a book that had more accessible and familiar recipes.

I have used Cook's Illustrated cookbooks for a long time. They were great when I was first learning how to seriously cook and didn't have a lot of confidence that what I was doing would actually turn into an edible meal. However, as my cooking skills increased and my interest in cooking expanded, I found I was more and more disappointed with what Cook's Illustrated was putting out. There's only so many ways you can rehash the same "classic American" Yankee staple foods, and when they would attempt "ethnic" cuisine, it always seemed kind of halfhearted - like, we are doing this because we know otherwise people won't buy our magazine or cookbooks, but we don't like it. We live in the Southwest so I have eaten "ethnic" food (Mexican and Spanish) for a long time and my husband and I are big fans of Thai, Japanese, Chinese and Asian fusion cuisine. As time went on and I became a better cook, there was less and less that CI did that I found interesting enough to make at home.

Then, a few months ago I came across this book at a used bookstore and was really surprised at the ambitiousness of the recipes and the innovation level of the food. It seemed very unlike any Cook's Illustrated book I had seen recently, and in fact, that turned out to be the case. The recipes are amazing. They really do produce restaurant-quality food at home. I have prepared several things now (including one of the Thai soups and the shrimp-and-corn-pancake dish) and the recipes turn out fantastic. Some of them are not simple, but the flavors you end up with are well worth it. It truly is like eating restaurant food at home.

I had mostly written off Cook's Illustrated as boring food from boring people but this really opened my eyes. If they will put out more books like this, I'll keep paying attention to what they're doing. You can't argue with their research and technique, but as I said, I only need so many recipes for pot roast (and I prefer my grandmother's, anyway). This book really stretches the boundaries of what a home cook can do - one of the most fun parts is the new techniques you have to teach yourself to complete some of the recipes - and therefore makes it very relevant and entertaining for today's "foodie" home cook. This book is so head-and-shoulders above the cuisine level in most Cook's Illustrated books that I almost wonder if they put the book out and then freaked out and distanced themselves from it, because it is just so unlike their other work, and I don't remember seeing a lot of promotion for it anywhere. In my opinion, the only way CI is going to be able to stay relevant is with work like this. I hope to see a "More Restaurant Favorites at Home" cookbook released in the future.