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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Take one top New York restaurant, add danger, drama, and dialogue, toss in their best recipes, and you have a cooking classic.
How does a 4-star restaurant stay on top for more than two decades? In On the Line, chef Eric Ripert takes readers behind the scenes at Le Bernardin, one of just three New York City restaurants to earn three Michelin stars. Any fan of gourmet dining who ever stole a peek behind a restaurant kitchen's swinging doors will love this unique insider's account, with its interviews, inventory checklists, and fly-on-the-wall dialogue that bring the business of haute cuisine to life.
From the sudden death of Le Bernardin's founding chef, Gilbert Le Coze, to Ripert's stressful but triumphant takeover of the kitchen at age 29, the story has plenty of drama. But as Chef Ripert and writer Christine Muhlke reveal, every day is an adventure in a perfectionistic restaurant kitchen. Foodies will love reading about the inner workings of a top restaurant, from how a kitchen is organized to the real cost of the food and the fierce discipline and organization it takes to achieve culinary perfection on the plate almost 150,000 times a year.
Meanwhile, Le Bernardin's modern French cuisine, with its emphasis on seafood, comes to life in sophisticated recipes, including Striped Bass with Sweet Corn Puree, Grilled Shishito Peppers, Shaved Smoked Bonito, and Mole Sauce, and Pan-Roasted Cod with Chorizo, Snow Peas, Piquillo Peppers, and Soy-Lime Butter Sauce.
On the line
| Customer Rating:  | What a great book. The photos of the food are amazing. Just mouth watering...
I loved reading this book! There's so much wonderful and interesting information in it. For example, one part goes over the actual cost of some food items in the restaurant. It helped because it gave me an idea of the high quality ingredients that are used and how much care is given to get the right flavors for the dishes.
This book goes over different areas of how the restaurant Le Bernardin is run. Oh, my gosh. I had an idea that running a restaurant was a lot of work, but I didn't know any details before. This book showed to me the art and the heart of running a restaurant.
I haven't been to a restaurant of this type before. I've been more into home cooked foods with the family. But, I have a desire to go to a restaurant like this now. I would like to experience the flavors and the environment that this books speaks of.
After the book goes over how to run the restaurant, there are recipes! They are on different colored paper in the back of the book, so they are easy to find. While the recipes look delicious, I don't know that they will be so easy to make. But they go into great detail, so I'm sure I will enjoy cooking one or more of the recipes. The best part of the recipes for me are the interesting stories and tips that each includes. I enjoyed reading how the recipe was created or where the inspiration for it came.
I'm keeping this book out on my coffee table. My sister already commented on how cool the book is! The fun thing is that with so much data in it, it's not going to get old for my guests to look through. Honestly, this is a very entertaining book! |
Great Book On How A Top Restaurant Is Run.
| Customer Rating: | I picked up On The Line because I had seen Eric Ripert on some food shows and I am fascinated on how busy restaurants manage to create good meals on a daily basis. It is an excellent book, which introduces the reader to Chef Ripert and Le Bernardin, explores in detail every aspect necessary for creating a successful restaurant and includes recipes from Le Bernardin.
My only disappointment is that the book does not really examine in detail any problems faced by Chef Ripert in his running of Le Bernardin. I really did not get an idea of any flaws in the running of the restaurant past or present under Ripert. Most great businesses do not start off great and often deal with problems on a regular basis. The great businesses are the ones which overcome these obstacles. Still, the end result is a fascinating look into the world of how Le Bernardin and restaurants work.
The book is structured well. It is broken into five parts which include:
1. The History part which looks at the history of Le Bernardin from creation to the present;
2. The Kitchen part which looks at the structure of the Kitchen at Le Bernardin and interviews people ranging from the Chef de Cuisine to the porter. The section addresses the importance of everyone down to the dishwashers;
3. The Dining Experience part which looks at the role of those in the dining area from the Maitre d to the Wine Director. It explains the role of waiters, hostesses and even busboys;
4. The Business part which looks at the business end of Le Bernadin from the cost of food to business partnership and charity work;
5. The Recipes part which includes a number of recipes from Le Bernadin. The book includes pictures of the completed recipes in earlier sections.
Included throughout the book are great photographs as well as charts and drawing which all compliment the text. The charts include lists of all the positions at the Le Bernardin, a section on the hiring process at the restaurant, a list of what's in the pantry and a drawing of the layout of the kitchen.
As mentioned, my only problem with the book is that there are no sections dealing with people who have concerns about the restaurant (other than the age of the building) whether they be, current employees, former employers, critics or other restaurant owners. There really isn't even much about mistakes that were made at the restaurant and the lessons learned which have made Le Bernardin one of the best restaurants in the country, being one of only three to earn three stars in the Michelin Guide which is the Guides best rating.
For instance, in one section on the "Director of Moving Parts" the reader learns the building is old and pipes have broken and refrigerators stopped in the middle of the night. Yet no real detail is given on any of these events and whether they affected service on that day or how they were fixed.
I gave On The Line five stars because it does go into great detail on how Le Bernardin functions and gives insights into how, in general, restaurants work. There are great color photos and great recipes at the end. Still, for me, it could have shed much more light on the restaurant business and Le Bernardin if it took a more critical look at how this top restaurant manages to be so good.
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It'll make you hungry!
| Customer Rating: | I've always been interested in the business side of running a restaurant, and this looked like it would be an interesting read. It's not a "gossipy" or "tell all" type of book, but rather a clear, detailed examination of what it takes to actually run a large, up-scale restaurant. Fans of books such as "Kitchen Confidential" may be disappointed, but if you're interested in what goes into getting that plate from the kitchen to the table, this is a fantastic exploration of an astonishingly complex business.
What I found most enjoyable were the lists -- they breakout what is actually ordered on a daily/ongoing basis, how many meals are prepared, the specific time line for preparation, and many other metrics, including what staff are expected to do (and not do). This may seem at first glance to be boring, but it's presented in a way that makes it quite interesting and eye-opening.
The photography is an added bonus -- gorgeous shots of what must be spectacularly delicious entrees, appetizers, and desserts. Yes, we're talking food porn of the highest quality.
My only complaint is the typography. Granted, my eyes aren't as young as they used to be, but I found the small type a challenge to read, especially when the background was colored. Throw us aging boomers a bone, publishers - kick up the point size a bit!
Dishes are also explored not only from the pragmatic assembly/cooking point of view, but the conceptual as well -- what the chef was striving for when assembling the ingredients. |
Great book, but as yet unrecognized.
| Customer Rating: | 'On the Line' unfortunately has been neglected due to the releasing of some major cookbooks by other chefs. 'The Fat Duck Cookbook', 'Alinea', 'A Day at El Bulli' were all released around the same time as this book. They are also all immaculate in their design, and have special quirks that set them apart.
On the Line comes with a striking presentation (albeit not as much as the more expensive true cookbooks listed before), lots of photographs, tons and tons of information (to how much food they order, to what the staff does, to how much they spend), all wrapped up with a look the staff and the history of the restaurant.
'On the Line' is a great book for those interested in how one of the best restaurants in the world operates, and probably is the better book for someone who's a non-cook to purchase (plus it's cheaper). It doesn't give recipes and doesn't mean to be a cookbook, so it's really unfair that it is probably being compared to all the other books released around the same time. Not only is it a good coffee table book, you'll probably also learn a lot. |
Six Million Dollars Worth of Great Food!
| Customer Rating: | This book is TOP quality! It is a delight to the eye with lots and lots of fabulous, artsy photos and is a very interesting read but would be great just sitting out to browse through too.
The book starts with the history of restaurant Le Bernadin, "that caused a shift not only in how New Yorkers perceived French restaurants, but also in how Americans ate fish." And there is a lot of information and recipes for seafood, salmon, tune, fluke, hamachi, oysters, crab... but great desserts are included too.
But wait, there's more, it gives you some very helpful information and tips for restaurants but is also really practical for the home entertainer as well. We get an interesting run down on the pastry chef, the wine director, and maitre d'. For example, maitre d' Ben Chekroun lists 129 cardinal sins of good service: Forks with bent tines, improperly chilled beer or wine, incomplete orders, walking past items dropped on the floor!!
The book is well organized and very easy to read, fascinating to read. The chapter, " In The Kitchen " does what it says, takes you in the kitchen, decodes the language of the kitchen, sous-chef, tournant, gives you a sensible kitchen lay out and an example of schedules for preparing the food, and what they keep in those huge refrigerators.
Really a very interesting book if you are interested in food or what make a restaurant run smoothly and serve incredible food, six million dollars worth of food! |
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