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Title: California Dish : What I Saw (and Cooked) at the American Culinary Revolution by Jeremiah Tower ISBN: 0-7432-2844-8 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 04 August, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.86 (14 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: In defense of an American original
Comment: Jeremiah Tower is without a doubt one of the culinary world's most dynamic, enigmatic souls. Having met him several times and tracked his career over the years, I can testify with certainty that he polarizes people immediately. People with big personalities and charisma tend to do that. Tower's "autobio" is at times painfully self-aggrandizing and his tone can be bitter, but the real point of this book is DOES IT ENTERTAIN? I say YES. There are so many sides to every story and I for one am pleased to read that Alice Waters is not the second coming of Mother Teresa. This book does a great job of capturing a period in time (The Celebrity Chef) that will not be repeated despite the best efforts of young turks like Rocco DiSpirito. It happened once, like the era of the supermodels in the late 1980s and early 1990s and that's what Tower attempts to share with his readers. This book isn't as mean-spirited as people think, and certainly no more so that the media is to celebrities on a daily basis. A decent read where you can open any chapter and enjoy a tidbit about Tower's life. Tower is a terribly self-absorbed agent provacateur but that's what makes him so interesting and a real catalyst for change in the food world--then and now.
Rating: 5
Summary: Don't Get Mad, Get Even--Stylishly So...
Comment: I just finished reading Jeremiah Tower's outrageously stylish memoir, and I don't hesistate to say it's compusively readable and hugely entertaining. I grew up in San Francisco and know the culinary history of that fabled city inside and out. I only know Tower through his reputation. While I've dined at Stars, (wonderful food in a superb party atmosphere), his now-closed bistro in San Francisco, I never ate at Chez Panisse during his tenure there as the chef.
I appreciate anybody who isn't afraid to bite back at a nasty and disloyal media, or some of their powerful icons. And Tower takes no prisoners here, deservedly serving up Alice Waters, Michael Bauer (S.F. Chronicle food critic), and others. He's already been accused of being bitter--and so what! But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Tower grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth. His mother, aunt and uncle and his world travels, exposed him to a wide range of great cooking, the best in wines and spirts, even during the terrible 50s when the U.S. was pretty much a agricultural and culinary wasteland when it came to fresh ingredients. Tower further refined his pallette in Boston during his Harvard years. Well traveled, well-read, intensely and naturally curious about food and the great wines and spirits of the world, it's no wonder that he gravitated towards cooking professionally. Though he never attended culinary school, he didn't need to. He was a collector of menus, wrote his own, and came up with wonderful ideas based on his education, his experience and his organic connection to food.
Tower managed to talk his way into the chef's job at Chez Panisse, and the rest was history. He brazenly established his surpremacy calling upon everything he had learned, and his timing was impeccable. Just as Alice Waters and other pioneering souls in California were creating wha the press would dub California Cuisine, capturing the culinary world by storm, and Tower was in the middle of it all. He cannily exploited the press, and his natural talent and flamboyance made him a big star.
When he finally opened Stars, he had created a powerful coterie of the world's (and San Francisco's) moneyed and social supporters. From day one, the restaurant was a huge smash hit, and Tower it's majestic king.
And after a little more than ten years of massive success, it all fell apart. A victim of his own wandering attention span and spread-too-thin ambition, lawsuits (frivolous and otherwise), the San Francisco earthquake (1989), which hurt Stars's business, defecting personnel, and a formerly adoring press that had suddenly morphed into jackals, Tower's fall was mighty and humiliating.
He charts his history honestly. His trademark champagne glass ever hoisted, Tower isn't afraid to take the blame himself when necessary. He acknowledges his hair-trigger temper which hurt many. Only at the very end does his story get a tad whiney. But considering what he was up against, I'm not sure I blame him.
Tower also vividly and lovingly recalls his many friendships with some of the great food personalities of the last fifty years. There are portraits of James Beard, Richard Olney, Barbara Kafka, Wolfgang Puck, and Elizabeth David. He enjoyed his friendships with Rudolf Nureyev, S.F. socialite and big Stars customer, Denise Hale, Francis Ford Coppola, Luciano Pavarotti, Dany Kaye, and George Hamilton. He's incredibly generous with other chefs and famous cooks, and shares his deep admiration for the talents of his colleagues, such as Daniel Boulod, Mario Batali (a former employee), Charlie Trotter, Lidia Shire, Jacques Pepin, Julia Child (though I sensed some chiliness here), Michale Chiarellia, Robert del Grande, Dean Fearing, Lary Forgione, Ken Hom, Hubert Keller, Emeril Lagasse, Drew Nieporent, Jamie Oliver, Charlie Palmer, Lulu Peyraud, Debra Ponzek, Paul Prudhomme, Eric Ripert, Michael Roberts, Jimmy Schmidt, Lindsey Shere, Henri Soule, Martha Stewart, Jonathan Waxman, and others.
The book also includes three interludes where Tower sounds off about the freshness of ingredients, creating harmonious menus, etc. These interludes give Tower ample room to write about the things he feels passionate about as a restarauteur and chef, and his devotion to getting it right.
Tower sets the record straight about "California Cuisine," and has much to say about some young chefs who abused the term by pairing the wrong ingredients, and went overboard with strange culinary experimentation. This set the tone for a backlash, some of it which reached to the his own doorstep, not because of his own cooking, but because of his vast celebrity.
Some will probably think Tower is ungrateful to Alice Waters, who was in the position to give him a job that launched him to the heights of a great career. Tower thinks she took way too much credit. I never thought that he was being mean-spirited towards her. She is often given sole credit for creating a culinary revolution in this country by opening Chez Panisse. Tower is generous to her contributions, but he's also testy about her manipulation, and rewriting of their history (or rather ignoring it). I think he's balanced and fair towards her. And after all, Alice Waters (as he points out) still does not list the chef of Chez Panisse on her restaurant's menu--an oversight that would never occur in restaurants of similar stature. They had a complex relationship. Waters has been rather mum about some of the sniping she's taken from Tower. I'd like to hear her side of the story as well.
Tower is a great chef because he brings a wealth of experience, education, his knowledge as a world-traveler who has kept his eyes and nose open to the best things that life has to offer. CALIFORNIA DISH can be bitchy entertainment, but it is als a celebration of that experience. He vividly tells his side of a wonderful story.
Rating: 1
Summary: Ridiculous
Comment: I am only about a third of the way through this book and already I hate this guy. In the first 50 pages he has alluded to dreaming up the Atkins diet, the Chunnel, and being the inspiration for Legal Seafoods - among other things. He spends his college years swigging vintage Champange and we're supposed to believe that he was "down to his last $25" when he started working at Chez Panisse? I am only going to finish this book for the outrage.
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Title: Jeremiah Tower Cooks: 250 Recipes From an American Master by Jeremiah Tower ISBN: 1584792302 Publisher: Stewart, Tabori & Chang Pub. Date: 02 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Cooking by Hand by Paul Bertolli ISBN: 0609608932 Publisher: Clarkson Potter Pub. Date: 19 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: America's Best Chefs Cook with Jeremiah Tower by Jeremiah Tower ISBN: 047145141X Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 19 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Feeding a Yen : Savoring Local Specialties, from Kansas City to Cuzco by Calvin Trillin ISBN: 0375508082 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: The Apprentice: My Life In The Kitchen by Jacques Pepin ISBN: 0618197370 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 10 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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