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Bill Buford and his characters, Dario Cecchini, Mario Batali and Marco Pierre White, cavort and revel in excess through this fascinating journey into becoming a professional chef and restauranteur.

Buford initially applied for an externship at Batali's restaurant, Babbo, but eventually followed the ages-old advice, and travelled abroad, to learn from the teachers of his master. Batali is a restauranteur, as is White: both are skilled chefs, but both also run massive for-profit establishments, and are concerned with the curious intersection of their food and their money. The bottom line not only means getting the right pizza-dough recipe, as was the problem for Batali's new restaurant, Otto, but also turning a once-cursèd venue into a splashy dining area (ditto, Otto). Cecchini is a butcher to whom Buford becomes an apprentice, and he revels in the quirkiness of his trade. He must also be a paragon of virtue to the slow-food establishment, for his preparations take days and days of careful, manual labour. Or mere seconds of expert knowledge, of where to slice through tendons and across massive pieces of flesh. Buford doesn't comment on the slow-ness of things, thank goodness; much of his narratives gallops along with his characters, whose language and carriage leap off the page. Buford has a knack for nuance, and plays out his frustrations and triumphs through the many other chefs he meets. The lively dialogue and the entertaining scenes work well together to present his progression from an aspiring home chef to a lowly intern and prep chef, to a skilled butcher's apprentice.