by Eric Ripert
First published 2016
Eric Ripert was six when his parents divorced in southern France, tearing him away from his beloved father and leaving him with a harsh stepfather who shipped him off to boarding school. When his father died on a hiking trip a few years later, young Eric found his only comfort in food. He watched his mother roll couscous and his grandmother make tarte aux pommes from the kitchen doorway, forbidden to enter because boys didn't belong there. At eleven, an eccentric local chef recognized something special in the boy and took him under his wing. Eric discovered that food wasn't just sustenance but his true calling. This passion drove him through the grueling years of culinary school and into the brutal world of Paris's elite restaurant kitchens under legendary chefs like Joël Robuchon and Dominique Bouchet. Learning to cook proved easier than surviving the punishing restaurant line. At twenty four, Eric crossed the ocean to America, carrying with him the skills and scars that would eventually make him one of the world's most celebrated chefs.
Genres: autobiography, biography-memoir, food-writing, culinary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, overcoming-adversity
Setting: France, Paris, America
Period: 20th-century
247 pages · Hardcover · Random House
Content warnings: abuse