Rating: 
Summary: William Faulkner writes a Food Book
Review: I couldn't follow this book until the last 4 chapters. Kuh does not write with any sense of order, pattern, or routine. The beginning chapters are a mess.It's just so hard to follow...reminds me of the first section in The Sound and the Fury. I suppose if you are very familiar with US FOOD HISTORY you can figure it out. I am not. I am well versed in Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. I bought this book to enlighten myself and learn about the history of American Cuisine. Having said that, the last 1/3rd of the book is pretty good. My favorite parts are the history of Chez Panisse (co-ed naked cooks) and the opening of Le Cirque in Vegas. I am glad I read it, but it took too much work to enjoy. Like a tough steak.
Rating:
Summary: William Faulkner writes a Food Book
Review: I couldn't follow this book until the last 4 chapters. Kuh does not write with any sense of order, pattern, or routine. The beginning chapters are a mess. It's just so hard to follow...reminds me of the first section in The Sound and the Fury. I suppose if you are very familiar with US FOOD HISTORY you can figure it out. I am not. I am well versed in Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. I bought this book to enlighten myself and learn about the history of American Cuisine. Having said that, the last 1/3rd of the book is pretty good. My favorite parts are the history of Chez Panisse (co-ed naked cooks) and the opening of Le Cirque in Vegas. I am glad I read it, but it took too much work to enjoy. Like a tough steak.
Rating: 
Summary: entertaining and interesting, albeit a bit superficial
Review: I enjoyed reading this book. It admittedly suffers from the paradoxical flaw of all such light feature writing: if it succeeds, it leaves you wishing that it were a more substantial book. The writing was stylistically ambitious, like poorly translated Proust or an undergrad's attempt to imitate late James. Yes, his editors did let him down, but Dr. John's pedantic inventory of errors is a bit much and, frankly, laughable to anyone with even a passing knowledge of contemporary usage.
My most serious criticism is that the book is too short; had I bought it new at full cover price, I would feel cheated.
All in all, it allowed me to spend a couple of hours in the company of a lively, chatty fellow who knows things that I don't about things which nonetheless interest me.
Rating:
Summary: Forget the bad reviews . . . . . read it for yourself!
Review: I just finished this book and was SHOCKED by the completely harsh and undeserved reviews this book received by some of the previous reviewers. These folks must not have read the same book as I read! I THOROUGHLY enjoyed this book. Patric Kuh did a fabulous job bringing "The Last Days of Haute Cuisine" to life. This is a man who knows the restaurant industry and so who better to interview the likes of Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower, Sirio Maccioni, etc.? Who better to share the wonderful history of the first restaurants in America? I loved every moment of it and so appreciated the humor and irony he shared throughout the book. For anyone interested in reading about American restaurant history, I strongly recommend you give this book a read!
Rating: 
Summary: An insightful history
Review: I wanted some light reading for a vacation & grabbed this book. Once I started, I couldn't put it down. There I was, on vacation, doing just what I could have done at home -- reading a book. Though many chefs and restauranteurs are profiled or interviewed, it's definitely not a collection of celebrity interviews. Nor is it about kitchen philosophies or tips for success. Rather, it's a social analysis of the entire idea of cuisine. Food is only a third of it: economics, class, socio-political movements, entrepreneurship, and the immigrant experience make up the rest of Kuh's subject. He tracks the changes in top-tier American restauranting from the eyes of owners, chefs, patrons, food critics, cookbook writers, and economic statistics. What emerges is a portrait of a cyclic symbiosis of purveyor and audience. Restauranteurs challenge the notion of what food is to be; the public absorbs the notion and changes it in a uniquely American way, which then facilitates the next generation of restaurants. It might sound dry (and there are indeed a few dry spots), but overall it's engaging, personal, and interesting. As others have noted, occasionally an overly-abstract sentence might leave you scratching your head, but that wasn't nearly enough for me to knock off a star. I thought this was a fine book.
Rating:
Summary: a twenty five dollar expanded airline magazine article
Review: kuh knows what he is writing about, claiming extensive parisian restaurant kitchen work, and says he interviewed sirio, alice, joe baum, puck, etc but he needed a tougher editor the flaw here is the cost/information/style issue. for this kind of bucks, the style is not heavy enough, and lots of the meatiest sentences seem compressed by editorial hands rather than bearing the flavor of the author himself. the theme of the book is how cuisine changed from the alleged phoney snob appeal of "haute" in the 1950s to today's show biz celebrity chef owners, but the theme is hidden and has been much better explained elsewhere the interviews are fun, but again, they seem to skim rather than to delve or critically analyze what is being said a minor quibble would be the author's mistaken view that exclusion of many potential diners in the bad old days was based on some kind of social/religious/class snobbery whereas in actual fact, the owners and operators of most of the old haute cuisine rug joints came from peasant origins and learned the hard way that their regulars would simply not be comfortable with inadvertent vulgarities and lack of food knowledge if they just let anyone with $7.95 (average plat de jour at chambord, pavillon, etc in 1950!) have a reservation. not all exclusion is snobbery-sometimes it is both kindness to the excluded and protection of regulars upon which haute cuisine joints depended. (by way of contrast, bourdin, except for overdoing the drug/alky bit, is more interesting, levels with the reader, and really explains with real zest and flavor what really goes on in the kitchen kuh did try hard-but he faded in the stretch, or his editors were not stringent enough to justify the price
Rating:
Summary: The Last Days of Haute Cuisine
Review: Patric Kuh is a food critic for Los Angeles Magazine currently, although he has been a chef and has traveled widely. He grew up in Spain and Ireland, then headed to France to learn cooking. He spent some time working in the kitchen of "21" in New York and then for a San Francisco couple before ending up in Los Angeles. This book describes and explains the evolution of fine cuisine in the United States from the introduction of French cooking in the 1939 Chicago World's Fair to the foundation of Alice Water's Chez Panisse (and beyond). The writing is lucid and interesting. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, flawed anecdotal history of american cuisine
Review: Patrick Kuh traces the history of the modern american restaurant from the 1950's to the present. His underlying themes are fascinating. First, that our concept of what "haute cuisine" means has changed utterly, from fancy, French (but not necessarily very good), red velvet, and pretentious, to a riot of cuisines and architectures -- for the food as well as the decor. Second, that with the invention of the credit card, fine dining has been democratized beyond the upper class. Third, that what we now think of as American cuisine was born in Calfornia as a quasi-political movement. Kuh traces these themes from Le Pavillon in NY, where he explains the ancien style, to the first breakthrough, The Four Seasons, where the new architecture of Mies' Seagram buildling demanded a new food and a new decor. He covers the political beliefs driving Chez Panisse in Berkeley in the 1970's and the concept of hospitality behind Danny Meyer's Gramercy Tavern, Madison Park, etc. of the present day. Kuh uses the histories of well-known restaurants and the outside personalities who make them go to illustrate his points, and there's much here to learn. The early chapters are the strongest, in part because the material seems so utterly ancienne regime. When was the last time your meal was displayed to you on a platter and then replated tableside with much flashing of knives? Do you know what a gueridon is, or what is meant by "le standing"? How about service "a la Russe"? But Kuh's ability to organize and drive his narrative forward are not that strong, and by the middle of the book you'll find your attention wandering.
Rating:
Summary: A pleasant read
Review: The usefulness of this well-written--if uneven--book lies in its description of the emergence of the modern American concept of a restaurant. The story of the emergence of Restaurant Associates and the company's influence on today's restaurants is a story that has not been told before. From a restaurant model imposed from France (ultimately untenable), and all of the poorly executed imitations in every regional city in America, has emerged the American synthesis balancing innovation, profitability,and popularity. The real thread of Kuh's story is not about food enthusiasts or how Julia Child changed home cooking or how M.F.K. Fisher became a spiritual guru to foodies everywhere. It is about the change in the profession of restaurant management and the emergence of celebrity chefs, in the beginning two unique American innovations, now widely imitiated. Go back and read Joseph Wechsberg's essay on La Pyramide in Blue Trout and Black Truffles and you'll be reminded how cutting edge the American restaurant concept pioneered by Restaurant Associates once was, and how different the celebrity chef is from his predecessors, like the overinflated Paul Bocuse. Kuh's chapter on Wolfgang Puck is solidly in the tradition of the great Wechsberg, and this portrait and others make this a delightful and fascinating exploration of an exciting time. Kuh deftly draws contrasts between his own overseas and American immigrant experiences and those of Restaurant Associates' partners (who would have thought that the concept for the Four Seasons was worked at a New Jersey airport restaurant?), themselves products of the school of hard knocks. There are many suggestive directions here for others to take up in writing about the evolution of American cuisine.
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Summary: A Perfect Birthday Gift
Review: tomorow is my 72 birthday. Ms Kuh's excerpt is a recollection very familiar to me. I have dined at Druant at the Ritz,New york,Paris ,etc. My 18th birthday luncheon was held at Colony. Ishared lunch with my father on his 50 birthday at Pavillion. The menus described and the manner of service will introduce her readers to a very real and wonderful world that is gone and thanks to her are not forgotten. Thankyou for all of the delightful nostalgia.I can visuallize the Trylon and the Perisphere even a I type.
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