Publication date:
07 February 2014Length of book:
352 pagesPublisher
Taylor Trade PublishingISBN-13: 9781589799141
No Experience Necessary is Chef Norman Van Aken’s joyride of a memoir. In it he spans twenty-plus years and nearly as many jobs—including the fateful job advertisement in the local paper for a short-order cook with “no experience necessary.”
Long considered a culinary renegade and a pioneering chef, Van Aken is an American original who chopped and charred, sweated and seared his way to cooking stardom with no formal training, but with extra helpings of energy, creativity, and faith.
After landing on the deceptively breezy shores of Key West, Van Aken faced hurricanes, economic downturns, and mercurial moneymen during the decades when a restaurant could open and close faster than you can type haute cuisine. From a graveyard shift grunt at an all-night barbeque joint to a James Beard–award finalist for best restaurant in America, Van Aken put his trusting heart, poetic soul, natural talent, and ever-expanding experience into every venture—and helped transform the American culinary landscape along the way.
In the irreverent tradition of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, and populated by a rogues’ gallery of colorful characters—including movie stars, legendary musicians, and culinary giants Julia Child, Emeril Lagasse, and Charlie Trotter—No Experience Necessary offers a uniquely personal, highly-entertaining under-the-tablecloth view of the high-stakes world of American cuisine told with wit, insight, and great affection by a natural storyteller.
Long considered a culinary renegade and a pioneering chef, Van Aken is an American original who chopped and charred, sweated and seared his way to cooking stardom with no formal training, but with extra helpings of energy, creativity, and faith.
After landing on the deceptively breezy shores of Key West, Van Aken faced hurricanes, economic downturns, and mercurial moneymen during the decades when a restaurant could open and close faster than you can type haute cuisine. From a graveyard shift grunt at an all-night barbeque joint to a James Beard–award finalist for best restaurant in America, Van Aken put his trusting heart, poetic soul, natural talent, and ever-expanding experience into every venture—and helped transform the American culinary landscape along the way.
In the irreverent tradition of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, and populated by a rogues’ gallery of colorful characters—including movie stars, legendary musicians, and culinary giants Julia Child, Emeril Lagasse, and Charlie Trotter—No Experience Necessary offers a uniquely personal, highly-entertaining under-the-tablecloth view of the high-stakes world of American cuisine told with wit, insight, and great affection by a natural storyteller.
This is not your mother’s cookbook, and it’s not truly a cookbook, at that, although recipes are slapped in as palate cleansers between restaurant-themed chapters detailing chef and cookbook author Van Aken’s escapades. Yet this might just be the book to hand to nearly every raffish, wanna-be-something male in sight—a rowdy, fist-pumped-in-the-air memoir of a guy who found his way chopping, dicing, and wreaking havoc. Van Aken’s story starts in the 1970s, so there’s hitchhiking, Volkswagens needing push starts, and fired-up grills (and girls) around every corner. Though his kitchen mates tend to serve f-bombs with every meal, Van Aken seems like a pretty good guy, gamely trying his hand at many non-food-related jobs, marrying the young lady he truly loved, and his enthusiasm for his life is evident in every exclamation point. Like Forrest Gump with a carving knife, the chef serves up tales of hearing Jimmy Buffet in a little Key West dive, partying at Tennessee Williams’ house, and more, all in an era before celebrity chefs truly sprouted. Come and get it while it’s hot—bad language, good times, fine dining.