Professional chefs and people who cook with a passion bordering on fanaticism are unquestionably weird, wild, and woolly. After enthusiastic dinnerparty cook - and amateur kitchen bumbler - Bill Buford inadvertently ends up with (in)famous chef Mario Batali as a guest one evening, they become friends...after which Buford takes a hiatus from his job as 40-something NYC magazine editor to become a kitchen "bitch" in Batali's Babbo restaurant. Although I personally hate to cook, I did love having a peek into a world I'll never enter: the high-pressure, high stakes daily frenzy of what it takes for a chi chi urban restaurant to serve (and satisfy) its persnickety clientele night after night. Buford then heads to Italy to apprentice for a stint with a melodramatic, but famous, butcher in Tuscany to "learn" meat. He ends up waxing poetic the joys of handmade "slow" food, reminding me of the same locavore message of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "Animal Vegetable Miracle." The Italian butchery part of the book dragged, but the initial Babbo portion where Buford starts as a bungler and rises to proficient, hardcore cook is fun and fascinating.

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