Recipe for Success

A decade ago, American readers were enthralled by stories about burgeoning Internet companies and the people who ran them. How quickly things change. The wonder boys of that bygone era, and our fascination with them, seem as outmoded now as a 60 MHz microprocessor.

So will it be, no doubt, with today’s star chefs. Nearly all of them, and their restaurant empires as well, eventually will go the way of the fondue pot. The public’s attention will shift to a different genus of creative entrepreneurs. But ours is the age of the Food Network and bestsellers about goings-on in the dry-goods area of restaurant pantries. High-end eateries and their chefs have incredible cachet.

Now comes what may be the most thorough, behind-the-scenes examination ever written about a restaurant. Leslie Brenner, an accomplished food writer, spent much of the year 2000 at Daniel, a New York restaurant regularly on lists of the nation’s finest.

Brenner interviewed the staff in the kitchens, dining rooms, business offices and, yes, the storage and receiving areas. Her exhaustive rendition of what she saw and heard will leave even the most inquisitive foodie, well, stuffed.

Indeed, near the end of the book, describing an evening’s dinner service, Brenner interrupts her own narration. “And so it goes,” she writes, apparently worn out from hundreds of pages of painstaking description. By this point, she has relayed, well-nigh verbatim, numberless exchanges between cooks and detailed the fate of every ingredient in dozens of dishes. (“A large, perfectly seared sea scallop sits atop gratineed asparagus and a drizzle of aged balsamic vinegar ... “) Brenner even inventories the sous-chefs’ footwear (French cooks prefer clogs, others wear running shoes).

Blessed with an encyclopedic knowledge of ingredients and cooking techniques, and able to record conversations in shorthand, Brenner probably could have written an entire book about a single meal. Given the depth of her knowledge, it might have been more compelling than the book she wrote, which suffers from repetition and counterfeit suspense.

Nothing much changes at the restaurant between Jan. 4, the first of her dispatches, and Dec. 18, the last. “Specials” are devised each day by the chefs, the menu undergoes an overhaul every season, staff quit and get replaced. Fundamentally, though, life inside Daniel consists of one arduous lunch and dinner after another, much as it does at any crowded restaurant.

To be sure, Brenner tries valiantly to eke out a story line about her hero, Daniel Boulud, the chef and owner, and his quest for a four-star rating from the restaurant critic for the New York Times. (Boulud had four stars at his previous restaurant, after all.) With $10 million invested in the new place, and some of the world’s most talented sous-chefs on his payroll, it could only be a matter of time before he triumphs again.

Nor, contrary to the publicity copy, can Brenner dish out “the kind of delectable, undercover details” that made a bestseller of Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential.” Boulud is as genteel as Bourdain is coarse, and Brenner admires Boulud and his lieutenants too much to rag on them.

Rather than an expose, “The Fourth Star” is an appreciation of a chef whom the author describes as a brilliant manager and “a mature artist working at the top of his game.” There are revelations in Brenner’s book, plenty of them, but they are the kind that gratify those of us who wonder what grade of wine is used for the wine reduction sauce and what kind of knife the chef prefers.

When Brenner ventures into Daniel’s pantry, her shocking finding is not a copulating couple, but Minute Rice. Who would have thought, amid the Valrhona chocolate, Banyuls wine vinegar and Colavita Extra Virgin olive oil, there would be Heinz ketchup and Minute Rice?