Publisher Annotation: From the glamorous to the entitled, from royalty to the financially ruined, everyone who wanted to be seen-or just to gawk-at the hottest restaurants in New York City came to places Michael Cecchi-Azzolina helped run. His phone number was passed around among those who wanted to curry favor, during the decades when restaurants replaced clubs and theater as, well, theater in the most visible, vibrant city in the world. A front-of-the-house...

"In his memoir Restaurant Man, Joe Bastianich charts his culinary journey from working in his parents' red-sauce joint to becoming one of the country's most successful restauranteurs. Joe first learned the ropes from his father, Felice Bastianich, the ultrapragmatic, self-proclaimed restaurant man. After college and a year on Wall Street, Joe bought a one-way ticket to Italy and worked in restaurants and vineyards. Upon his return to New York, he...

My Usual Table is a love letter to the great restaurants that have changed the way we eat--from Trader Vic's to Chez Panisse and Spago to elBulli--and a vivid memoir of a life lived in food, from a founding editor of Saveur and James Beard Award-winning writer Colman Andrews. For reviewer, writer, and editor Colman Andrews, restaurants have been his playground, his theater, his university, his church, his refuge. The establishments he has loved have...

"In Made From Scratch, the late business maverick Kent Taylor tells the legendary story of Texas Roadhouse and in the process reveals its recipe for success: embracing unorthodox business practices. Because isn't it a little unusual for a company to do almost no advertising? Is it wild to give away free peanuts and rolls and keep prices low, even as costs rise, or to keep the menu basically the same since it opened? Does it fly in the face of reason...

"It has been four and a half decades since Alice Waters opened the doors of Chez Panisse, the 'little French restaurant' in Berkeley, California, that has been at the leading edge of the American culinary revolution ever since. Fueled in equal parts by naïveté and a relentless pursuit of beauty and pure flavor, Alice transformed our relationship with food, fine dining, and what it means to eat well. In [this book], Alice reflects on the desultory...

Publisher Annotation: A collection of hilarious essays about how food became one man's obsession and coping mechanism, and how it came to rule-and sometimes ruin-his relationships, from the Cobra Kai actor, stand-up comic, and host of Food Network's Raid the Fridge. 240pp., 75K

What goes into the making of a chef, a restau­rant, a dish? And if good ingredients make a differ­ence on the plate, what makes them good in the first place? In his highly anticipated first book, influential chef Peter Hoffman offers thoughtful and delectable answers to these questions. “A locavore before the word existed” (New York Times), Hoffman tells the story of his upbringing, professional education, and evolution as a chef and restaurant...

When's the last time you picked up a business book that was so engaging you couldn't put it down? Steve Difillippo was only 24 when he opened his first Davio's restaurant. Since then, he's wowed Julia Child with his pomodoro, overlooked some triple-X rated shenanigans at Table 7, taken on American Express, gotten himself into Time and Newsweek (for taking on American Express), cooked a rabbit for Stevie Ray Vaughn, inadvertently gotten a guest divorced,...

"The delicious story of pioneering chef Alice Waters who changed the way America eats and kickstarted the organic food movement. A pioneer of the slow and organic food movements, she is also known for creating Edible Schoolyard, a project that involves kids in the growing of their own food"--