Leonardo Lucarelli's no-holds-barred story of his slapdash journey from an unconventional childhood in India to restaurant kitchens in Rome and beyond may make listeners question the sanity of professional chefs—but not their passion for cooking. Narrator Will Damron's soft voice and casual cadence invite listeners into a world of demanding bosses and unsteady finances, grueling workdays and late-night partying. Damron's clean, clear performance is generally accent free, but his occasional Italian sounds believable and helps establish the setting of this memoir. Unlike celebrity chefs, Lucarelli's career doesn't end with a television contract; his is a less glamorous path, wrought with mistakes and bad choices as well as good luck, hard work, and supportive friends. Damron's easy-on-the-ears delivery makes this an enjoyable audiobook experience. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

11/14/2016
Italian chef and consultant Lucarelli has worked in kitchens ranging from holes in the wall to chic Michelin-starred eateries. Though he doesn’t revisit all of them, he gives readers a glimpse at the day-to-day lives of those working the line under harsh conditions. It’s a story that’s been told, and told better, many times before. Lucarelli’s tale includes lots of drugs, cops, lurid sex, busy nights, short fuses, and high stakes. He offers insight into what it really takes to not only become a chef but sustain a career, in addition to moments of solipsistic reflection. The urge to compare the book to Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential is inevitable, and under that scrutiny Lucarelli’s work falls far short. His themes are similar to Bourdain’s, but his book is a lesser version of the same story. Lucarelli, though a talented writer, doesn’t have the same bravado and chutzpah. Those in the restaurant and hospitality industry will likely recognize themselves in some of the book’s vignettes. (Dec.)

“The bad-boy chef memoir might as well have its own section in bookstores and Mincemeat places itself squarely in a tradition personified by Anthony Bourdain…Mr. Lucarelli is also a hilariously funny writer…His book reads like a picaresque novel as he roams from kitchen to kitchen, encountering thick-necked mobsters, lustful waitresses and cheating bosses. His description of an encounter with a pastry chef he meets at a party in Rome is delivered in typical deadpan humor.” –Wall Street Journal

"If you're in the mood for an internationally acclaimed, intellectually captivating memoir with an almost Conradian atmosphere, you'll be served well by maverick chef Leonardo Lucarelli's Mincemeat." –ELLE

“Wise and often very funny, the book offers sumptuous glimpses into human foibles and provides readers an unforgettable taste of the unabashedly sordid realities that underlie the high-gloss world of Italian cuisine. A wickedly candid memoir.” –Kirkus Reviews

“If you love food but not cooking, satisfy your appetite with Mincemeat: the Education of an Italian Chef, Leonardo Lucarelli’s kitchen confidential from bel paese.” –Family Circle Magazine

"Enthralling." –BBC.com

“Celebrated chef Lucarelli has a bad-boy reputation, but he’s more than just the Italian Anthony Bourdain. In his new memoir, the chef and anthropologist writes about his experiences working in some of Italy’s finest restaurants, where employees live hard and wild, but always adhere to an unwritten code of loyalty.” –MensJournal.com

“Personal and heartfelt…Mincemeat is a damn good memoir.” –Shelf Awareness 

"Translated from the Italian, Lucarelli’s culinary autobiography moves at breakneck speed, just like his kitchen." –Booklist

Leonardo Lucarelli's no-holds-barred story of his slapdash journey from an unconventional childhood in India to restaurant kitchens in Rome and beyond may make listeners question the sanity of professional chefs—but not their passion for cooking. Narrator Will Damron's soft voice and casual cadence invite listeners into a world of demanding bosses and unsteady finances, grueling workdays and late-night partying. Damron's clean, clear performance is generally accent free, but his occasional Italian sounds believable and helps establish the setting of this memoir. Unlike celebrity chefs, Lucarelli's career doesn't end with a television contract; his is a less glamorous path, wrought with mistakes and bad choices as well as good luck, hard work, and supportive friends. Damron's easy-on-the-ears delivery makes this an enjoyable audiobook experience. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

2016-09-26
An Italian chef’s no-holds-barred memoir of his love-hate relationship with cooking and the cutthroat world of restaurant cuisine.The India-born son of “Italian hippies,” Lucarelli stumbled into his profession at age 19 when he told Sandro, a man who had just lost his sous-chef, that he knew “how to cook a little.” His experience was greater than Lucarelli let on: at home, his father had shown him how to turn “cooking into pleasure.” Though an impoverished university student in Rome at the time, he began to work in the kitchen; the author’s adroitness as a shoplifter allowed him to buy expensive foods he used for culinary experiments popular among his friends. Lucarelli never intended on making cooking a career, but the next job that followed—for which he submitted a resume “jam-packed with blatant lies”—was also in the kitchen. As he moved from restaurant to restaurant in Rome and northern Italy, he quickly learned that while the food business never guaranteed security, it also never lacked for colorful characters, such as bosses who could never be trusted to pay on time (or even at all) and co-workers “with troubled pasts and present lives wasted by drugs and alcohol.” In between screaming at other chefs, finding and losing jobs, dating sleazy waitresses, drinking, and doing drugs, Lucarelli also learned how to set up and organize restaurant kitchens and menus. Yet rather than continue to follow the tortured and chaotic path to culinary stardom, he fell in love with a “very shy girl” named Giuliana. Together, they had a son, who taught Lucarelli that the most meaningful life emphasized family over the pursuit of egoistical pleasures like opening his own restaurant and relentlessly running after Michelin star–glory. Wise and often very funny, the book offers sumptuous glimpses into human foibles and provides readers an unforgettable taste of the unabashedly sordid realities that underlie the high-gloss world of Italian cuisine. A wickedly candid memoir.