Rating: 
Summary: beautiful and delicious!!!
Review: The French Laundry is a beautifully photographed gastronomic delight!! This book is not just a "cookbook" from the reknowned French Laundry restaurant of Thomas Keller located in the wine country of California, it is much, much more. It is the story of a young man having a respect for food, how it is grown and harvested, along with respect for those that spend their time nurturing the food. He takes great joy in taking great care and overlooking no detail in the preparation of food for those who will surely enjoy it. He wants to develop this love and respect for food in those who eat his creations! Michael Ruhlman writes the story of the French Laundry and of Thomas Keller as well as the stories of those that supply the lamb, rabbit, mushrooms, cheeses, wines and produce.
The story alone is worth the reading, but the recipes put it over the top!! While some of the recipes may be too detailed for many "home" cooks, there is so much variety in the recipes that everyone can find something to try!! This is classic French culinary food with a terrific American twist.
Rating: 
Summary: A Must Have
Review: If you love food and you love books this one is a must have. It is worthy of every penny. This beautiful book includes 150 recipes from the French Laundry. Thomas Kellar goes to great lengths explaining technigues throughout so that you can create these wonderful recipes. There is even a section on how to use the book. Tips are plentiful throughout making preparing things such as Black Sea Bass with Sweet Parsnips, Arrowleaf Sinach, and Saffron-Vanilla Sauce a lot less daunting. Kellar is very particular about presentation and thus provides pointers in this respect as well. The pictures are breathtaking making for a beautiful book that I love to just even flip through and peruse. It makes for a good read as well as for good cooking! Recipes do take time and some ingredients require a bit of what seems like a scavenger hunt but it is all well worth the experience!
Rating: 
Summary: Don't try this at home
Review: I bought this book for my wife this Christmas. She is an excellent cook and we have been to the French Laundry and loved it. The book is large and pretty, but not one you would place on the counter and risk splattering in the process of cooking. Most of the primary ingredients are impossible to find, unless, perhaps, you are Thomas Keller. He lists 5 sources for a few of the ingredients, but I could only access 2 of the web sites. We would love to try several of the receipies but I think we can only find ingredients for 1 or 2 of them. This is really an expensive souvenir of a wonderful dinner for anyone except a chef with access to exotic ingredients and lots of time.
Rating:
Summary: A floor wax ? A dessert topping ?
Review: Just like the old Saturday Night Live sketch, this book isn't sure what it is - a coffee table book or a "real" cookbook. Whatever it is, it succeds. The items I've made from it have been fantastic, and the essays about artisan suppliers are facinating. The techniques used are challanging, but are well laid out for the average home chef. Sometimes the ingredients and equipment might be intimidating, but go for it. You won't be disapointed
Rating:
Summary: Great for inspiration
Review: This is a great book if you are looking for inspiration to bring to your own dishes. However, if you are simply looking for new recipes to try this would not be the best book to purchase. The recipes in this book require a great deal of culinary knowledge to create. On the positive side, this book is a great read because it contains some amazing photography coupled with high scale food. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I would make some of the recipes for special occassions but the recipes are too costly and time consuming for everyday cooking for most people. If you are looking for inspiration and examples of creativty and innovation from a great restarant I would definately buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, beautiful book!
Review: In case you haven't heard, The French Laundry cookbook's recipes range from pretty darn complex to "nearly-impossible-to-make-by-anyone-except-master-chefs-with-three-assistants". However, none of that matters. This is still my favorite cookbook in my collection because it's one of the most beautifully put together and well written cookbooks, scratch that, BOOKS, I've ever seen. The layout is gorgeous, it's full of incredible pictures and all of the short essays written by Thomas Keller (or a few other people) are well written and interesting, be it on an experience he had butchering rabbits to descriptions of plate decorations to the stories behind all the people who grow the vegetables, catch the fish and raise the lamb that goes into the dishes. I can't emphasize how beautiful this book is, it's truly a coffee table book as much as a cookbook. The dishes themselves are, as I said, all startlingly complex and many hav exotic ingredient. But they have been adapted for home cooks and even though I have yet to try any full recipes, there is a fair amount that seems to be within my reach of doing somewhat successfully, and I'm a teenager who's been cooking seriously for less than a year. I did try the garlic chips that accompany some other dishes and they were delicious by themselves, crispy, garlicky and wonderful. Still, even if you don't make one whole recipe, this is still a great book full of facinating stories, wonderful analysis of ingredients and, as I cannot say enough, incredible, incredible photography. I love this book.
Rating:
Summary: Going beyond the average
Review: I purchased this book last year and found it to be my most valuable cookbook. As a professional chef for 18 years now, all I can say is THANK-YOU Chef Keller. Sure, this book is not for the everyday use for dinner for the kids, but its makes us all think and create a new level of perfection. The thoughts and destinies of this man is where most chefs would like to be. His recipes and photos are a work of art. This has helped my focus on detail to please my clients and myself. Buy this book, you wont be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible, but be forewarned...
Review: To put it simply, this book is amazing. I'll try to sum it up in a few main points...Design--the design on this book makes it a work of art. The photographs and layout are literally awe-inspiring. A word of caution...the size is very cumbersome and doesn't exactly make for ease in the kitchen. Text--Very enjoyable text and it is pleasurable reading. Most helpful are pointers on technique and procedure. Recipes--Most are difficult, a few are pretty easy. Herein lies the caveat/point of caution. To understand this point, one must understand the philosophy of this restaurant/Keller. Food is a work of art and presentation is everything in Keller's mind. With that in mind, be ready to break out the tweezers and forcepts to get this food to appear as it does in the restaurant/book. It can be painstaking and frustratingly over-done. On the restaurant--It is a very good restaurant and worthy of most of the commendations about it. It is perhaps one of the best dining experiences I've experienced. However, it is becoming, in my humble opinion, slightly over-rated. The wait on reservations has now hit the 3 months+ mark. (From those slightly less demanding, I've heard stories of a 6 month wait.) In other words, if you would like to dine there in April, better make reservations in January at the latest. To be honest, the experience is not THAT fabulous and such a wait is more of a product of hype than of quality. You would be better off going to Terra or Tra Vigne in the same area. It would likely be more enjoyable as well. Don't get me wrong. This is a fantastic book and it is a fantastic restaurant. It is just not THAT fantastic if you follow me. But as for the book, purchase it if you understand what you're in for--it will be a valuable addition.
Rating:
Summary: ...
Review: And you can't put it down, if you're a Foodie like me. The photography is gorgeous, for starters. I have severly damaged my copy by licking the stunningly detailed photographs. Thomas Keller's food is truly artwork, and the editor is to be commended for their excellent taste in putting this book together. The text is a nice blend of the practical (including techniques as basic as vegetable prep) and utterly fanciful (garnish and sauce techniques that are uncommon outside $150/person restaurants). The five recipes that I have tried have all been exceptional, and assume only a moderate level of kitchen experience and a good working knowledge of basic technique. These are *very complex* recipes. I usually do one of the items with the rest of the meal coming from other, less fussy, sources. This is Tweezer Food taken to a genuinely tasty end, unlike some presentations that just look "good enough to eat".
Rating:
Summary: French Laundry Cookbook
Review: You must dine at the French Laundry to truly appreciate and understand what is behind the book. We had the honor of being invited back to the kitchen to meet Chef Keller and in awe of the precision and simplicity behind the scenes. We are still pinching ourselves. If you are "in the business" you must take yourself there and absorb every crumb.
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