What is it really like to open a new restaurant in New York City? The advent of Food Network created an entire generation of young women and men who want to be chefs, who want to own their own restaurants, who want to build a culinary empire. And those who don't want to go into the profession are just as interested in what they eat and where they eat it. Social media is filled with photos of food, restaurant reviews and recommendations, and recipes and cookbooks. Food is something that drives us all.
Someone who is driven more than others is 24-year-old Jonah Miller, who jumps from working in a kitchen to running one in Generation Chef. With the support of friends and family and a business plan any MBA student would be proud to hand to their professor, Miller opens his Spanish food restaurant Huertas and takes us along for the bumpy, crazy, intense, wild ride.
Author/journalist/food writer Karen Stabiner tells this story with such intimate detail that I sometimes feel that I'm eavesdropping on other people's lives and need to back my stalker self off. But she never backs down, never looks away, and tells Miller's story with such attention to detail I have to keep reminding myself that it's not fiction. This is real, and we have a closer than first row seat to all the action. Meticulously researched, Generation Chef is the real deal story of the cut-throat restaurant business in New York.
You don't have to look further than the blurbs on the jacket to know how authentic this is. Mario Batali, Danny Meyer, Tom Colicchio, Michael Ruhlman--these men all know what it is to start a culinary empire, and they know that this powerful, gut-wrenching story is as authentic as Miller's Spanish cuisine. This should be required reading for any young chef wanting to open their own restaurant. And for those of us who don't have a culinary empire or want to start one? For us, it's just quite a ride!
Galleys for Generation Chef were provided by the publisher through NetGalley.