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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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