Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, April 2014: Reading Michael Gibney's Sous Chef--a debut that plays at the outer bounds of memoir--may be the closest most of us will ever come to living a day as the second-in-command at a Michelin-starred New York City restaurant. Written in the second person, it's intense and immediately devourable. Sous Chef has all the drama, disaster, and triumph people have come to expect from reality restaurant TV, but far more intimate and nuanced. On every page, Gibney turns out phrases to savor: this is kitchen writing on par with Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones & Butter. No one who’s read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential will be surprised by the more licentious elements, but the real thrills are those transcendent moments when every player is absorbed by their role, moving together to assemble a fantastic meal. In Gibney’s hands, the anonymous act of preparing and serving great food to ravenous multitudes feels authentically noble, verging on heroic. --Mari Malcolm