Kitchen Con: Writing on the Restaurant Racket

by TrevorWhite (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $16.03

  Trevor White's hilarious account of life as a restaurant critic is also a social history of restaurant criticism and an expose of the restaurant business. The author reveals how diners are routinely ripped off by self-styled artists and greedy restaurateurs, while arguing that anyone can become a food critic - all you need is a pen and an appetite. This defiantly populist critique of restaurant culture redefines the dining room as a place in which humans can be greatly satisfied, rather than an artist's studio. From the world's first restaurant to the most fashionable kitchens of London, Paris and New York, Kitchen Con is a book-length tribute to dinner but also a scathing attack on gourmet dogma. Written with style, humour and breathtaking candour, Kitchen Con lifts the lid on the culinary cartel in a whirlwind tour of the world's great restaurants, before turning its attention to the greatest con of all: the author himself. No one is spared in this riveting tale of life at the heart of the restaurant racket.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.25

  Kitchen Con is like no book that has ever been written before about restaurants. Intelligent, funny and stylish, it tells the story of a food critic who never quite learned to cook - the perfect emblem, as it transpires, for a culture in which most people read more menus than recipes. Trevor White worked as a food critic in great cities across the globe before sitting down to write this memoir of life as a judge of the world's most expensive cooking. But Kitchen Con is not just a list of very good meals: it lifts the lid on the culinary cartel - celebrity chefs, guidebooks, odorous waiters - in a way that is both highly amusing and very brave. If you have ever wondered why they call it the hospitality business, this is the book for you.