Newspaper Article

Chef' offers a taste of the quest for food of perfection

Stephenson, Anne

2000

Overview

When Mario Cuomo graduated from law school and tied for first place in his class, the dean suggested that he change his name in order to get a job on Wall Street. \"Can you imagine me as Mark Conrad?\" Cuomo asked [Maria Laurino], and then he posed the question that became her book's title, establishing between them a bond of ethnic ambivalence. In the first part of this book, [Michael Ruhlman], who wrote on the same subject in \"The Making of a Chef,\" investigates the grueling certified master chef exam at the Culinary Institute of America (where one participant was berated for his \"knife skills\" after a slice of duck terrine turned up wider at one end than at the other). Part two moves to the kitchen of the personable Michael Symon of Cleveland's Lola Bistro. Part three goes to California's French Laundry, opened by Thomas Keller (who had no formal culinary training) in 1994 and three years later called \"the most exciting restaurant in America\" by Ruth Reichl of the New York Times.

• Publisher: Journal Sentinel Inc
• Subject: Laurino, Maria / Rosen, Jeffrey