For though he remains beloved in his adopted hometown of DC, published several well-regarded cookbooks, and earned a ream of national culinary awards, Richard never became a household name like many of his peers. In the case of Richard, the eulogistic recognition is especially welcome. (If not, sorry for the spoiler.) As the story ebbs and flows around the two late culinarians (along with plenty of guest appearances by Daniel Boulud), it sometimes reads more like an elegy than a memoir. Most readers will already know Bocuse and Richard are now cooking in the great big kitchen in the sky. The best coffee you get is the one you drink after crossing the border into Italy.”ĭespite moments of levity, a heaviness hangs low throughout Dirt. French coffee is filthy, weak, incompetently made, and miserable-making to drink. “An enduring French fallacy is café culture. Though Buford is clearly in awe of the country’s cuisine, he is never so starstruck that he can’t offer a delightfully unvarnished opinion. Sometimes, there’s a sense the author is not sure exactly what he’s looking for in all these adventures, but the deeply researched, sharply executed writing makes most of the detours feel rewarding rather than distracting. Buford seeks to meet Bocuse, guzzles the warm blood of a just-slaughtered pig, investigates whether French cooking is grounded in Italian traditions, and wrestles with the issues of living abroad with his family. There’s a short apprenticeship with a talented boulanger before he enrolls at the famed cooking school L’Institut Paul Bocuse, which he skips out on for a longer stage at the legendary La Mère Brazier. Buford stages - that is, works for low or no pay in exchange for training - in Richard’s kitchen, helping inspire the author to transplant his wife and their two young sons from New York City to Lyon, a cradle of classic French cooking and Bocuse’s home.īuford’s Lyonnaise journey zigs and zags. “I suspected that the black show-no-stains shirt, if you got close to it, would have yielded up an impressively compressed bacterial history,” he writes.Īfter the voluminous and irrepressible Richard jokingly introduces himself as Paul Bocuse, one of the greatest Gallic chefs of the modern era, the two strike up a food-forward friendship.
Buford’s first impression isn’t swooning. The saga begins with the former New Yorker editor literally bumping into French-born chef Michel Richard, who rose to the heights of his profession in Washington, DC, with his award-winning, boundary-pushing French restaurant, Citronelle. The subtitle of Bill Buford’s new Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking attempts to prepare the reader for the book’s sweep, but this sprawling memoir exceeds even those generous borders.
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