- Bill Buford
Bill Buford (born 1954) is an American
author andjournalist . Buford is the author of the books "Among the Thugs " and "Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany".He was born in
Baton Rouge, Louisiana , and raised inSouthern California , attending there theUniversity of California, Berkeley before moving to
University of California at BerkeleyKing's College ,University of Cambridge , remaining inEngland for most of the 1980s.Buford was the former fiction editor for "
The New Yorker ", where he is still on staff, and for sixteen years he was the editor of "Granta ".Publications
1991's "
Among the Thugs " is purportedly an "insider's" account of the world of (primarily) English footballhooliganism . His chief thesis is that the traditional sociological account of crowd theory fails to understand the often complex problem of football violence as a particularly Englishworking-class phenomenon. His years of exhaustive first-hand research as an 'outsider' both in terms of his background and position as a member of the journalistic community is considered by some as one of the great social research documents. [ [http://www.powells.com/biblio?PID=28734&cgi=product&isbn=0679745351 Powell's Books review] ]2006's "Heat" is Buford's account of working for free in the kitchen of "Babbo", a
New York restaurant owned by ChefMario Batali . Buford's premise is that he considered himself to be a capable home cook and wondered if he had the skill to work in a busy restaurant kitchen. He met Batali at a dinner party and asked him if he would take on Buford as his "kitchen bitch". [ [http://www.metacritic.com/books/authors/bufordbill/heat Metacritic.com review] ] [ [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12911726 Bill Buford reads from his kitchen memoir, 'Heat'] ] [ [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/books/review/28reed.html Will work for food] ] [ [http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/travel/0,,1815989,00.html What a carve-up] ]Buford begins his time at Babbo in a variety of roles including dishwasher, prep cook, garbage remover and any other role demanded of him. Over the course of the book his skills improve and he is able to butcher a hog and work any station in the restaurant. Buford travels to Italy to meet cooks and chefs who were critical to Batali's early culinary development, as Buford works and lives in some of the places Batali honed his craft.
Subsequently, Buford started working on a book on
French cuisine .References
External links
* [http://gremolata.com/buford.htm Gremolata.com interview] , July 2006
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