California Dish : What I Saw (and Cooked) at the American Culinary Revolution

Rating:
Summary: A pretentious entree served with a big slice of bitterness.
Review: As a food professional, I was eager to read about the whole California food revolution from Ms. Towers' perspective.
It took over two months for me to finish this book, not because I am educationally challenged in any way, but because the absolute pomposity of this man actually irritated me to the point where I had to stop reading it.
There are some fascinating stories and interesting facts but these are overshadowed by Towers' constant self-loving and enormous ego (at one point he states that during his training as an architect, he came up with plans to build an under-sea tunnel connecting Britain to France, long before anyone else! How sad).
The common thread running through this book is his constant sour grapes towards Alice Waters and Chez Panisse. Mr Towers felt he never really received the huge amount of praise he needed, and was sure he deserved, for his contribution at Panisse.
Most chefs dream of owning a restaurant-Jeremiah Towers owned several AND they were all successful. Despite this, and the fact that he was in the limelight as a celebrity chef for a few years, he still remains bitter. I guess some people are never satisfied. It's a shame, this could have been a good book. Check please!

Rating:
Summary: Ridiculous
Review: I am only about a third of the way through this book and already I hate this guy. In the first 50 pages he has alluded to dreaming up the Atkins diet, the Chunnel, and being the inspiration for Legal Seafoods - among other things. He spends his college years swigging vintage Champange and we're supposed to believe that he was "down to his last $25" when he started working at Chez Panisse? I am only going to finish this book for the outrage.

Rating:
Summary: You learn to loathe the chef
Review: I love cooking, reading about cooking and all things related to food. What is so disappointing about this journal of Mr. Tower's upbringing and career is how talent and creativity often have no relationship with a person's likeability.
There is no doubt that Mr. Tower considers himself a genius. His pairings of food and his understanding of the history of dining support this belief. BUT, his elitist attitudes, shallow perceptions and constant name-dropping all leave the reader with a bitter taste. He hints at myriad of sexual exploits, troubled relationships with colleagues and friends alike and very poor financial choices. Some of the food sounds marvelous and I actually ate at Stars as a child, but who would want to actually have a dinner conversation with this man?

Rating:
Summary: You learn to loathe the chef
Review: I love cooking, reading about cooking and all things related to food. What is so disappointing about this journal of Mr. Tower's upbringing and career is how talent and creativity often have no relationship with a person's likeability.
There is no doubt that Mr. Tower considers himself a genius. His pairings of food and his understanding of the history of dining support this belief. BUT, his elitist attitudes, shallow perceptions and constant name-dropping all leave the reader with a bitter taste. He hints at myriad of sexual exploits, troubled relationships with colleagues and friends alike and very poor financial choices. Some of the food sounds marvelous and I actually ate at Stars as a child, but who would want to actually have a dinner conversation with this man?

Rating:
Summary: Ridiculous
Review: This culinary memoir is the least informative and certainly the least inspiring of all I have read, but it is not without some merit within this genre. The most important warning to the reader going into this volume is that Jerimiah Tower has an AGENDA. The primary items of this AGENDA are to demonstrate how important HE was to defining California cuisine and how chummy he has been with the movers and shakers of late 20th century US culinary scene.
To dispense with the latter item first, there is no question that Master Tower could be considered a James Beard protégé and did have close relations to Jim Villas, Jonathan Waxman, Julia Child, Wolfgang Puck and (the great) Mario Batali. However, there is a very long list of culinary stars, itemized in another review of this volume, whose name appears in this book simply to enhance one's opinion of the author by his seeming association with these luminaries. Three (of many) striking examples is his mentioning Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, and Emril Lagasse, with whom he has no professional connection. In spite of the fact that he mentions Mario twice in his text and includes a picture of he and Mario, there is no information on their contact, even though Mario did work at Stars. A similar clue to the chronic name dropping is the appearance of a Barbra Streisand photo in the book, with no mention of her whatsoever in the text.
The first and more promenant item in Master Tower's agenda is his promoting the notion that he was instrumental in promoting what has become known as California cuisine. The first shot in making this case is in the prologue where he describes a luncheon prepared for 100 culinary journalists in Newport Rhode Island in 1983 where, by chance, he and his colleague chefs had to prepare the lunch in the open, on grills, in full view of the attending writers. They were impressed, of course, and began to identify the style there used as something distinct, the California cuisine. One main theme running through the book is the fact that he was as important, if not more important in establishing Chez Panisse as the fountainhead of the California style. I believe it is common knowledge that Alice Waters is a bit stingy in sharing credit for the Chez Panisse reputation past and present. I am looking forward to reading Alice's point of view, and even more, to reading some third party discussion of this scene. One minor item I would really like cleared up was who, Wolfgang Puck or Chez Panisse, was the first to stick a pizza crust in the oven with a California twist to it's toppings.
I find it strange that in this book there is no clear statement about what the California Cuisine doctrine is and how it is differentiated from earlier American cooking or from French cuisine, especially from Nouvelle Cuisine. Near the end of the book, he itemizes the tenants of nouvelle cuisine as:
- Hand raised ingredients
- Bought that morning
- Cooked at the last minute
- Eaten in season
- Based on local ingredients
- No longer using elaborate old style French sauces
So, how is California Cuisine different from this? Also, as the author cites himself, some of these principles were followed by major American restruants, at least in part, as long as 100 years ago (See reference to Delmonico's truck garden in New Jersey in the 19th century).
Tower also assumes some credit for making available a wider range of ingredients in the nation's supermarkets. I have it on relatively good authority that this trend begain in the early sixtys driven by Julia Child and the coincidental advent of French cooking in the White House under the Kennedys. A small irony I would enjoy researching some day is that, on the one hand, the use of locally available ingredients is touted while the restauranteurs are literally creating new local ingredients by enlisting local producers to start growing things they have not grown before.
A minor theme detected in the book was, I believe, a bit of misogeny. Aside from a justifiable effort to acquire some of the credit for Chez Panisse, Tower appear to be generally cool to at least two other major female figures, Julia Child and Paula Wolfert, in American culinary growth. To be fair, he is very decent in his treatment of Elizabeth David, primarily as one of the wellsprings of influence behing Chez Panisse.
My interest in culinary memoirs is primarily to answer the question `Why do people get into this business, with it's very long hours and modest pay?' Tower does little to answer the question and typically makes the profession look even less attractive than what I have described. Unlike several other memoirs, the book contains no recipes, just menus. I missed this. It would have gone a long way to describing exactly what the book was really meant to be about. The recipes make it look as if California cuisine is nothing more than French methods applied to Napa valley produce.
The bibliography is a very useful addition to the knowledge of literary foodies. It's worth the addition of one star to my opinion of the book.

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money...
Review: Tower is obviously a genius. He also comes across as somewhat narcisistic, but in an interesting way. His understanding of food, wine, eating are obviously very deep. The accounts of the beginnings of California cuisine and the whole food revolution are dead on. In the tradition of Alice B Toklas, he enjoyed his drugs. I reccommend this book highly to anyone interested in food, particularly American food and definately California or Berkeley food. The fact that I can buy fresh mesclun mix on an island six thousand miles from california is at least in small part thanks to Towers, and for that alone he deserves fame and fortune.