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He's Not Shy: Restaurant owner's book is outrageous and oddly hilarious
Knopf Photo
Kenny Shopsin's book has recipes in it, but it's also an introduction to the author himself.
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Published: December 17, 2008
■ Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin, by Kenny Shopsin and Carolynn Carreno. Knopf, $24.95.
Kenny Shopsin is a man equally obsessed and appetite-ridden. He's the owner of Shopsin's restaurant in New York, an unusual institution in which Shopsin interacts with customers in sometimes profane ways. The man apparently loves a good argument.
Is it true that he will flat-out refuse to serve any customer a cheese steak without onions, or a Cobb salad without bacon?
What pulls the reader through Shopsin's book, Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin, is a kind of horrified, hilarious amazement.
Shopsin, who has been notably profiled by Calvin Trillin in The New Yorker, offers such chapter titles as "Selling Water, or the Secret of the Restaurant Business" and "The Story of Shopsin's Turkey, or Why I Hate the Health Department."
The restaurant's food is mostly comfort food -- burgers, shakes, chicken salad, scrambled eggs, sloppy Joes. Though the menu does veer into eclectic ethnic dishes such as African green-curry soup, gazpacho turned into a salad, and a Thai twist on Cobb salad.
But the book is more than about recipes, as the title indicates. It's about Shopsin himself. The man has an opinion on just about everything, and he doesn't hesitate to make his opinions known.
Reading about Shopsin's is actually more fun than eating at Shopsin's; the book provides access to the food without the yelling and the edge of fear.
■ Cooking With Les Dames d'Escoffier: At Home With the Women Who Shape the Way We Eat and Drink, edited by Marcella Rosene and Pat Mozersky. Sasquatch Books, $35.
Cooking with Les Dames d' Escoffier: At Home With the Women Who Shape the Way We Eat and Drink has an endorsement by Jacques Pepin and a forward by Alice Waters of Chez Panisse fame.
The book, edited by Marcella Rosene and Pat Mozersky, features a previously unpublished Lobster Newburg recipe by Julia Child, a Les Dames member before her death. The recipe came from Child's early years of testing for her first book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Les Dames d'Escoffier is an organization of female chefs and other food professionals. The book's 366 recipes include M.F.K. Fisher's black olive tapenade with tuna and hard-cooked eggs; Edna Lewis' fresh blackberry cobbler; Dorie Greenspan's seared scallops with surprise sauce; Joyce Goldstein's greek yellow split pea soup; and Lidia Bastianich's pork rib guazzetto. All the recipes in the book include a suggested beverage.
The idea for the book came in 2004, when the publisher approached Rosene about a compilation of Les Dames recipes. Because Les Dames members include some of the country's best-known female culinary professionals, the publisher thought the cookbook was a natural.
There are tips on preparations, shortcuts and stories on how these women made a career with their passion. There are a few company recipes, but most are absolutely doable. These are the dishes these women make for friends or family. These are not the recipes they make in restaurant kitchens where they have four sous chefs."
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