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| If You Can Stand the Heat: Tales from Chefs and Restaurateurs | 
 enlarge | Author: Dawn Davis
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $20.00
Buy New: $2.10
You Save: $17.90 (90%)
New (31) Used (38) from $1.93
Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 413300
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 7.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0140281584
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5092273
EAN: 9780140281583
ASIN: 0140281584
Publication Date: October 1, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
What's the restaurant business really like? Expert chefs share their stories, secrets, and recipes for success.
Chefs and restaurateurs are today's most glamorized professions. But for every person who starts their own eatery, thousands more merely dream about it. Whether you are seriously considering making a career out of your passion for the kitchen or you're an armchair foodie, If You Can Stand the Heat is essential reading. This informative and dishy insider's collection of interviews with some of the country's leading chefs and food professionals shows what it takes to make it in the world of food, and helps answer such questions as: What are the first steps in opening up a restaurant? What can I expect if I make a mid-life career change?
Among the many stories here, Edna Lewis, the grand dame of Southern cuisine, talks about the importance of mentoring; Bobby Flay of Mesa Grill and Bolo discusses the chef as entrepreneur; and Rick Bayless of Frontera Grill shows how to pick the perfect spot for a restaurant. Each chef or restaurateur offers a recipe from his or her own personal collection, and numerous sidebars provide essential facts about every aspect of the business. From bad burns to bad luck, from five-star restaurants to corner cafes, these professionals reveal how incredibly difficult, but immensely rewarding, it is to work your way to the top of the food chain.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
Good book for those thinking of entering this field August 17, 2008
This book is perfect for someone who dreams of entering the restaurant business, either as an owner or as a cook. Too many 'cooks' have gone to culinary school dreaming of becoming the next Emeril Lagasse or Bobby Flay, just to enter a REAL restaurant and find it is not what they thought it was going to be. It covers not only the successful chefs but the one who have had a hard time making. This business requires long hours, hard work, and a lot of stamina. If you can't handle any of that then this business is not for you and that's what this book emphasizes. I don't think it is aimed at the person already in the business but at the ones thinking of entering. With the advent of of cable with its "Top Chef"(which I LOVE) or "the next food network star", novices need to truly get that food service is not a bed of roses, well at least not one w/o thorns.
 A great book August 5, 2006
If you can stand the heat is a really interesting book that tells you the lives of a few chefs that they invterviewed along with a few recipes. I read that it provided insight into the kitchen and things like that, but I hardly saw that going on. Luckily though, there stories and what they had to say were interesting enough. Recommended for all cooks looking to work in a kitchen.
business and recipes July 11, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
There are any number of books on the market that purport to tell you how to start and run your own restaurant. They tend to make up in enthusiasm what they lack in rigor in depicting a slice of the business world that is, at best, quirkily unpredictable. But If You Can Stand the Heat: Tales from Chefs and Restaurateurs is an exception.
The book is organized around four ingredients, er, themes: "Breaking In and Moving Up," "A Taste of America's Regional Cuisines," "Border Crossing," and "Chef-Owners on the Business of the Business." Because the book is liberally sprinkled throughout with short profiles of chefs' and restaurateurs' experiences, the reader comes away with a good sense of the trials involved. We learn how Anne Kearney, the owner of Peristyle, in New Orleans, struggled to get a grip on monthly expenses. One of her most costly lessons came when she realized that her payroll budget had been based on the previous owner's records, which hadn't included payroll taxes. The result, she discovered, was that her own budget was way out of whack.
The book is full of such stories. And the author also has included resources, ranging from thoughts on projecting an annual budget, to an item on the top four reasons restaurants fail (lack of capital, insufficient experience, poor menu planning, and disagreement among partners).
For an added treat, interspersed among the hands-on advice and profiles of restaurateurs are recipes for the signature dishes of the featured chefs. Kearney offers a recipe for the perfect meatless starter: hand-rolled ravioli with roasted tomatoes, mushrooms, and goat cheese with artichoke brown butter. Mmm.
Standing In the Heat March 2, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is an awesome resource for people who hope to become cooks or chefs. In it you will read about the lives of people who started out doing something they thought they loved and then just decided that they wanted to cook and ended up becoming great at it. Then there is also the stories of people who had an intense desire to cook and had to struggle just to get someone in the culinary indusstry to even look at them. The people in this book either own their own restaurants or are working in the most top quality food establishments there is. It evens gives some of these chefs most favorite recipes. It gives you alot of valuable informaiton from the top schools to attend,to what can shut down a first time restaurant opener's establishment. It's a great book to read and it's guaranteed to lead to great success!
Very Good Overall, but Bogs Down in Places May 11, 2004
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
If You Can Stand the Heat is a collection of experiences of some of the best cooks in the country. It is intended primarily for those who might be considering going into the food service industry, but is also fun and informative reading for home cooks. It covers how to get into a kitchen, what education you may need or might find useful, the basics of running the business, and even how to open your own restaurant. It also shows other resources that can be turned to for additional support and research. Each chapter also ends with a sampling of the chapter's featured cook's recipes that you probably will not want to try at home.
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