“It was really dark.” It’s a climactic scene, and ultimately hinges on whether or not Buford is going to follow the instruction of their superior and punch his co-worker. “Made to stand in the corner by a nineteen year old,” he said. At one key moment, the cook he’s working next to dismisses him. What’s more, the work, while rewarding, comes with a culture that runs on humiliation and machismo. In those kitchens, one works all day, every day, six days a week-worth doing for free if you’re a youngster trying to become a grand chef, but it’s a little rockier of a proposition if you are a middle-aged father. He was, after all, working as a stagiare, the classic French system of apprenticeship during which a young chef works in the kitchen of an established chef to cut his teeth and gain imprimatur. Long enough to make real friends, to learn the language (sort of) himself, and to come teeteringly close to running out of money. He lived in France long enough for his sons to think and dream in French, for them to have different handwriting (better) in French than they do in English. No one would expect restraint from Buford-he is not the sort to take a tour, skim the press release and call it a day-but this dive is deep even by his standards. That he began working on the book at all is, even in the middle of reading of it, somewhat of a surprise-you’re holding it, you know it happens and yet… So he had to move to France to do it and also, um, learn French-and do it all with preschool-aged twins and a wife in tow. For one thing, chefs weren’t impressed with his Italian credentials or experience. Buford found it difficult to infiltrate the kitchens of France. In the margin of my copy, I had written 14 years ago, “ah, so he’s going to France to do it again.” The resulting work, the rollicking Heat, ended with a note about how Catherine de’ Medici moved from Italy to France and taught the French how to cook.
To research his previous book, Among the Thugs, he spent eight years running with English soccer hooligans. This was par for the course, since Buford takes his time. He got so deeply involved in the food world that he ended up in Italy learning from a traditional butcher.
Before we get to that, some context about Buford.Ībout two decades ago, Buford found himself first with a New Yorker magazine assignment to work in the kitchen at Mario Batali’s Manhattan restaurant Babbo and then with a deal to expand the experience into a book. Not in a tremendous, Earth-shattering, I-found-the-coronavirus-vaccine way, but in a daily, almost pedestrian way. Right in the middle of Bill Buford’s recently published book Dirt, I came across something I think might irrevocably change my life-in fact, change all of our lives.
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