An entertaining, eye-opening investigation.
Behind the scenes of the creation of a single dish at a fine dining restaurant.
Friedman, producer and host of the podcast Andrew Talks to Chefs and author of Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll and Knives at Dawn, offers a lively look into what goes into the production of one meal, on one day, in one restaurant. He chose Chicago’s Wherewithall, a sleek 50-seat venue noted for its weekly seven-course tasting menu, focusing on the meat course, which, during his visit in July 2021, was a dry-aged strip loin with tomato and sorrel. At Wherewithall, he observes, “the food, like the food at most restaurants, is the creative, technical, and physical work product” not only of the owners and chef de cuisine, “but also of their sous chef and cooks, dishwashing team, and servers. From beyond the restaurant, it contains the labor of farmers, farmhands, producers, delivery people, packers, and too many others to list in full.” Besides spending a week on site, examining every facet of menu planning, cooking, and serving, Friedman scoured the Midwest, visiting the area farms whose products shape each week’s menu. Wherewithall serves only seasonal produce from suppliers such as Nichols Farm & Orchard, which grew the tomatoes; the Slagel Family Farm, which furnished the beef; Butternut Sustainable Farm, which supplied the sorrel; and the 29-acre Smits Farm, a purveyor of fresh herbs and other items. The author rode along with the delivery company that transported produce from farm to restaurant kitchen, and he spoke to the documented workers at the vineyard from which the restaurant buys its wines. Friedman profiles many of the hardworking staff who make the restaurant’s success possible, including owners Beverly Kim and Johnny Clark, who came from vastly different restaurant experiences; chef de cuisine Tayler Ploshehanski, who deftly manages the complexities of the kitchen; server Nooshâ Elami, who has developed an intuitive sense of what patrons know about food; and dishwasher Blanca Vasquez, “one of the unseen heroes” of the restaurant.
An entertaining, eye-opening investigation.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063135970
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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