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The Hunger: A Memoir of an Accidental Chef – Unabashed Stories from the Celebrity Hot Spot Restaurant in New York City
An inspiring, heartwarming memoir from the unlikely chef of The Waverly InnThe Hunger is an insider's take on the crazy life that is the restaurant business, as well as an underdog's tale of survival. Dissatisfied with his corporate career, John DeLucie followed his passion for food to a single cooking class at the New School (where he was named Most Likely to Succeed). He launched his first food gig at SoHo's famed Dean & DeLuca, then cooked at several New York–area restaurants.
For fifteen years, DeLucie worked his way through major challenges, while accepting both successes and failures, until finally opening his restaurant The Waverly Inn—the Greenwich Village sensation. He now shares secrets about the behind-the-scenes details from the tiny kitchen, the front of the house, and outside the restaurant, where the paparazzi gather. Also included are the stories behind some of DeLucie's signature recipes.
The Hunger is a story about food and desire and appetite—an intimate window onto a chaotic world.
233 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2009
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188 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
July 10, 2018
If you like Anthony Bourdain's writing, you'll love Delucie! A must read for all foodies!
My Rating: 5 stars
My Rating: 5 stars
November 20, 2009
The Hunger won't leave fans of foodie memoirs wanting more. John Delucie is the executive chef and co-owner of a trendy Manhattan restaurant. It's packed with celebrities and one of its other owners is Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter. Delucie followed a twisting and twisted career path to get there. Starting out as a refugee from a sales job he hated, Delucie earned his cooking chops the old fashioned way -- starting at the bottom literally chopping vegetables in the basement and working his way up, learning tasks, honing skills, living the weird life of a career in the kitchen, and ending up rubbing elbows with the likes of Stephen Speilberg and Billy Joel. These should be promising ingredients for a first person celebrity chef bio. Unfortunately, Delucie doesn't pull it off.
Perhaps not too surprisingly, The Hunger is a tad, to be charitable, pretentious. It's the foodie book equivalent of froth or foam, full of promise, but mostly hot air. What is surprising is that with all that juicy stuff to work with, the book is, well, bland. Alas, Delucie's description of one of the many restaurants he worked in, "pleasant enough, but about as striking as a loaf of white bread," fits his book like a well-worn glove.
The writing is tepid and pedestrian, disjointed and jerky. The book suffers from a lack of development and a lack of passion. The Hunger pales by comparison to Cooking Dirty, which covers much the same terrain, but has a sizzle, spice and pungency woefully lacking in The Hunger. Delucie is a mediocre writer whose lack of pleasure in writing comes through loud and clear. The book has the feel of a dish of leftovers hastily tossed together, rather than a finely crafted and well thought out dish.
Especially annoying is Delucie's penchant for dropping celebrity names. The only thing more irritating is when he doesn't drop the actual names, but instead describes, but doesn't name, celebrity diners, using such teasing terms as "Mr. Bighot Film Director," or "two of the most influential fashion designers to ever crisscross the Atlantic." Toss in a few enigmatically described dishes, just the barest hint of the stess and craziness of kitchen life, and you've got a foodie book, that like a ruined souffle, falls flat.
Perhaps not too surprisingly, The Hunger is a tad, to be charitable, pretentious. It's the foodie book equivalent of froth or foam, full of promise, but mostly hot air. What is surprising is that with all that juicy stuff to work with, the book is, well, bland. Alas, Delucie's description of one of the many restaurants he worked in, "pleasant enough, but about as striking as a loaf of white bread," fits his book like a well-worn glove.
The writing is tepid and pedestrian, disjointed and jerky. The book suffers from a lack of development and a lack of passion. The Hunger pales by comparison to Cooking Dirty, which covers much the same terrain, but has a sizzle, spice and pungency woefully lacking in The Hunger. Delucie is a mediocre writer whose lack of pleasure in writing comes through loud and clear. The book has the feel of a dish of leftovers hastily tossed together, rather than a finely crafted and well thought out dish.
Especially annoying is Delucie's penchant for dropping celebrity names. The only thing more irritating is when he doesn't drop the actual names, but instead describes, but doesn't name, celebrity diners, using such teasing terms as "Mr. Bighot Film Director," or "two of the most influential fashion designers to ever crisscross the Atlantic." Toss in a few enigmatically described dishes, just the barest hint of the stess and craziness of kitchen life, and you've got a foodie book, that like a ruined souffle, falls flat.
October 20, 2010
The Hunger is a story of a dickhead living in New York City with no idea what to do with his life. He decides to leave a dead end corporate job and go to culinary school. He works his way up the ranks of the food industry, destroying two marriages in the process. At the end of the book, he is chef/owner of his own wildly successful restaurant, and still a dickhead. Still, I enjoyed his writing style, and he didn't try to hide who he is, and he tells a good story. If you're the type who watches Food Network, you may like this book.
September 24, 2009
The book reads like a glorified timeline told out of order with a few shallow mostly cliché introspective footnotes thrown in. Mentions of interesting dishes he has created are scattered throughout the book and given minimal instructions, limiting the possibility of an aspiring cook being able to duplicate them. Enjoy his food but skip his writing.
October 26, 2015
Ще одна з книжок про те, чому я ніколи не хотіла бути шефом. Більше фікшн, ніж мемуари, тим не менш, дає можливість уявити, що таке професія, що таке талант, і скільки залежить від удачі, а скільки від наполегливості. Читається легко, але екранізація настільки далека від книжки, що аж смішно
December 17, 2009
Another chef trying to cash in,too bad he has nothing new to say. Tons of name dropping and false modesty. Bourdain did it better. still does.+
October 4, 2024
The Hunger turned out to be a book about the girl friends and the many chefs John Delucie worked for. It does go in chronological order and talks about some of his recipes. It's easy to read but seems like a story that has little to do with him being an accidental chef. There also seemed to be some name dropping that didn't add to the memoir. It would have been nice to expand more on the chef aspect of his journey.
November 3, 2024
I think I have had my fill of chef memoirs. They all have the same story for the most part. Long hours, small hot kitchen spaces, crappy bosses, crappy owners, getting let go due to the sad bottom line, cooking food you are happy to cook or cooking food you are not happy to cook. Drugs, alcohol, broken relationships. It isn't easy. This book did not stand out.
September 5, 2017
I wish this had been a good insight into the food industry of New York like it had advertised. Instead, I found myself reading a scattered account with very little understanding of the timeline of the events that happened, and little insight into any one place that Delucie worked. Not only that, but it's very hard to feel anything other than disgust for someone who cheats on his first wife for months and talks about all of the women in his life--restuarants and otherwise--rather objectively.
September 24, 2010
I'm a sucker for reality shows, especially those involving cooking contests, so I was predisposed to like THE HUNGER, despite the fact that it has nothing to do with vampires.
This memoir is framed with two stories, one of The Waverly Inn, which DeLucie is executive chef/partner, and one of his decision to become a chef in the first place. While the life of a chef is glamorized on television, DeLucie doesn't sugarcoat the long hours and low wages that people in the restaurant industry have to put in to make it.
The human element is more interesting than the food element in this book. If this were a novel, I would criticize the author for making DeLucie too much of a stereotypical character. He has the arrogant provincialism only a New Yorker can muster, where eastern Long Island is "the country" and anything that happens on the other side of the Hudson doesn't really matter. The arrogance especially shines when he describes his restaurant, where no one is famous enough to impress him, and if you're not famous, you don't even get a table. I can do without that kind of snobbery, and wouldn't like to meet him in person, but despite (or perhaps because of) his flawed character, I enjoyed DeLucie's tale of his relentless ambition, as he careened from one job to another, leaving the rubble of failed marriages in his wake.
I loved some of the stories in this, in particular, the one about the skinhead pastry chef. This book will probably not appeal to people who aren't a little obsessed with food, however, because there are a few editorial flaws which detracted from the prose. For example, in an early chapter, they talk about the stress of having Frank Bruni at their restaurant, and they go back and forth between saying he's at 701 and saying he's at 217. I wasn't sure if these were tables, or addresses, or seat numbers, or what. Also, at another point, he talks about bribing the "porters" with food to clean up after them. Are porters bussers? Delivery guys? Waiters? I marked a few other places in the text where a sentence just didn't read right, or where it needed to be closer edited. Since I generally don't notice these flaws, I expect that there were quite a few that I didn't catch.
This would probably be a good book to recommend to anyone who has culinary ambitions, as it does not make the restaurant industry look like an easy career path. It definitely seems like the kind of career taken by those with a rock-star personality--hard drinking, relentlessly ambitious type A people who are always looking out for number one.
This memoir is framed with two stories, one of The Waverly Inn, which DeLucie is executive chef/partner, and one of his decision to become a chef in the first place. While the life of a chef is glamorized on television, DeLucie doesn't sugarcoat the long hours and low wages that people in the restaurant industry have to put in to make it.
The human element is more interesting than the food element in this book. If this were a novel, I would criticize the author for making DeLucie too much of a stereotypical character. He has the arrogant provincialism only a New Yorker can muster, where eastern Long Island is "the country" and anything that happens on the other side of the Hudson doesn't really matter. The arrogance especially shines when he describes his restaurant, where no one is famous enough to impress him, and if you're not famous, you don't even get a table. I can do without that kind of snobbery, and wouldn't like to meet him in person, but despite (or perhaps because of) his flawed character, I enjoyed DeLucie's tale of his relentless ambition, as he careened from one job to another, leaving the rubble of failed marriages in his wake.
I loved some of the stories in this, in particular, the one about the skinhead pastry chef. This book will probably not appeal to people who aren't a little obsessed with food, however, because there are a few editorial flaws which detracted from the prose. For example, in an early chapter, they talk about the stress of having Frank Bruni at their restaurant, and they go back and forth between saying he's at 701 and saying he's at 217. I wasn't sure if these were tables, or addresses, or seat numbers, or what. Also, at another point, he talks about bribing the "porters" with food to clean up after them. Are porters bussers? Delivery guys? Waiters? I marked a few other places in the text where a sentence just didn't read right, or where it needed to be closer edited. Since I generally don't notice these flaws, I expect that there were quite a few that I didn't catch.
This would probably be a good book to recommend to anyone who has culinary ambitions, as it does not make the restaurant industry look like an easy career path. It definitely seems like the kind of career taken by those with a rock-star personality--hard drinking, relentlessly ambitious type A people who are always looking out for number one.
February 4, 2014
Generally interesting quick read. As other reviews go into more detail about, it has a basic structure of two stories: the author's development into a chef, and the genesis and existence of The Waverly Inn, converging at the point of the restaurant's opening. It's not nearly as in-depth or interestingly written as Kitchen Confidential or a number of other kitchen/restaurant/chef memoirs, being pretty obviously a product of those books establishing the genre ("You could make some money off that story!"). It is an original story in the way that every person has their own story, the twists here being the author's relatively late-in-life start in the culinary world at age 30, and opening and maintaining a massively successful business in a city and field known for constant failures. He rightfully attributes the success to the confluence of many factors including the varying backgrounds of the many owners, though he is clear on the fact, and I'm sure he's right, that outstanding food played no small part.
The sections on his personal life are unavoidable I suppose, but it represents him as such a womanizing cliché. His relationships to his coworkers, while often reflecting this mildly-to-blazingly misogynistic attitude, are much more interestingly and complexly rendered, as can be expected in a book by a workaholic about his career. Even as a fellow New Yorker who grew up in the surrounding suburbs, I found his "Manhattan is the center of the universe!" evangelism more than a bit heavy-handed, contributing to the feeling of a clichéd character. I don't believe you must always like the storyteller by any means, but he seems either one-dimensional or that he was forced to shoe-horn in the non-work stories after writing a pretty engaging book. I don't know the guy and will likely never meet him, but I'd doubt (hope not?) that his personality is so extreme on both those points.
If you're going to read just one "chef memoir," I'd have to recommend Kitchen Confidential before (the unimaginatively titled) The Hunger. However, The Hunger definitely worth a read if you want to go further into the subject, especially since it is a fairly light one, but I think you'd be best served with some prior interest in food and restaurant culture.
The sections on his personal life are unavoidable I suppose, but it represents him as such a womanizing cliché. His relationships to his coworkers, while often reflecting this mildly-to-blazingly misogynistic attitude, are much more interestingly and complexly rendered, as can be expected in a book by a workaholic about his career. Even as a fellow New Yorker who grew up in the surrounding suburbs, I found his "Manhattan is the center of the universe!" evangelism more than a bit heavy-handed, contributing to the feeling of a clichéd character. I don't believe you must always like the storyteller by any means, but he seems either one-dimensional or that he was forced to shoe-horn in the non-work stories after writing a pretty engaging book. I don't know the guy and will likely never meet him, but I'd doubt (hope not?) that his personality is so extreme on both those points.
If you're going to read just one "chef memoir," I'd have to recommend Kitchen Confidential before (the unimaginatively titled) The Hunger. However, The Hunger definitely worth a read if you want to go further into the subject, especially since it is a fairly light one, but I think you'd be best served with some prior interest in food and restaurant culture.
January 10, 2012
Not that it matters, but I can't remember if I got this one from Border's closing or B&N online clearance, but either way, I'm happy I spent the assumed $2.00 on it. I had never heard of the author, or the restaurant he works at, or even the person who wrote the forward....but there's a picture of a dining room on the cover and "food" appears in the subtitle, so I figured I'd give it a try. Like it says, The Hunger talks about Delucie's journey from 9-5 job to a very short time in cooking school, to his climb from prep chef to chef du cuisine at the Waverly Inn and everywhere in between. I'm not sure why, but I assumed the majority of the book would be about his final location, but it was maybe a third Waverly, two thirds journey there. He jumps around time wise which takes a while to get used to, come to think of it, I never really got used to it. Should the book get rereleased for some reason, it definitely would prove positive to have just a simple date at the title of each chapter to assist the reader in figuring out what point in his life he was talking about. Now I'm not sure if it's because he joined the chef ranks later in life, but in my experience he's pretty softcore considering the life of a line cook. He's pretty easy to like even though he exhibits a few moral blunders, but hey, who am I to judge? You should read The Hunger if not for the few simple paragraphs devoted to the morning of and days following September 11th, and how, as a chef at a hotel restaurant, and as a city, everyone banded together and helped in anyway they could. Those 2 pages gave me enough goosebumps to make up for anything else I didn't love about it, not to say there was a whole lot.
July 31, 2011
John DeLucie, the chef and part-owner of The Waverly Inn in New York City, is doubtless a very nice fellow. But there are too many books written by too many chefs extolling their climb to fame from humble beginnings. TIME Magazine favourably reviewed "The Hunger" in an article about this season's books by cooks. This book could have been condensed into a nice long magazine article, which would have been readable and interesting. DeLucie boasts of charging $55 a plate for macaroni and cheese with three thin slices of white truffle on top ... without giving the reader the recipe. Can a recipe for mac-n-cheese be that much of a trade secret? DeLucie boasts of how he learned to carve a perfect loin roast out of a whole beef loin without revealing the secret to the person who paid $24 for his book. He drops a lot of names of New York celebrities who eat in his restaurant and of Food Network chefs with whom he rubs elbows at celebrity events. One gets the sense that he is stretching on his tip toes in an attempt to ascend to their league. What the reader least needs to know is how he married and divorced two women nor about his extramarital affairs. Even his careful description of every apartment he ever rented in and out of New York City is more interesting than his indecent exposure of his sex life.
July 4, 2010
In tagging The Hunger, I couldn't even call it a cookbook. It simply provides no recipes. It is a memoir written by John DeLucie, executive chef of The Weaverly Inn in NYC, which opened in 2006.
DeLucie tells us of his struggles being a 9-5 headhunter, the emptiness of corporate life. At 30 he decides he wants to cook and completely changes career paths. The book is broken down into, what I'll call, comparative chapters, what went on when he first started to what is going on currently and back and forth. I did not particularly like this style. I would have preferred a more straightforward telling of his story from start to finish.
I feel as though DeLucie was writing for the regular person not so interested in the cooking aspect of being a chef. He drops names of those he's cooked for and met and those who've helped him out along the way. He briefly talks about his love life, martial relations, and how because of his chef status: the numbers he can/does get.
As a foodie, I enjoyed the short story of how the famous $55 Mac and Cheese came to life. After reading The Hunger, I know that being a restaurant chef is hard work and for DeLucie did not follow a straight path.
This ain't no Anthony Bourdan (sp?) memoir.
DeLucie tells us of his struggles being a 9-5 headhunter, the emptiness of corporate life. At 30 he decides he wants to cook and completely changes career paths. The book is broken down into, what I'll call, comparative chapters, what went on when he first started to what is going on currently and back and forth. I did not particularly like this style. I would have preferred a more straightforward telling of his story from start to finish.
I feel as though DeLucie was writing for the regular person not so interested in the cooking aspect of being a chef. He drops names of those he's cooked for and met and those who've helped him out along the way. He briefly talks about his love life, martial relations, and how because of his chef status: the numbers he can/does get.
As a foodie, I enjoyed the short story of how the famous $55 Mac and Cheese came to life. After reading The Hunger, I know that being a restaurant chef is hard work and for DeLucie did not follow a straight path.
This ain't no Anthony Bourdan (sp?) memoir.
June 26, 2009
I am loving this book...as a recovered (-ing?) restaurant manager...there is something about reading about the restaurant business that at once provides me with awe and longing and equally fills me with dread and panic!
This book is a fascinating account of Chef Delucie's ascent to restaurant glory. We read about his dissatisfaction with life as a shady recruiter and how he made the decision to become a chef. Interspersed with the colorful details of the cook jobs that led up to him having his own restaurant, we read of the famous clientele he serves at his restaurant, The Waverly Inn, in Manhattan.
I find myself addicted to hearing about the gorgeous food he's preparing, and cringing from the conditions that he has had to work in...endless days on his feet, hot as hell stoves and fryers and grills to work behind. Yet, the adrenaline rush of the restaurant business is what kept me there for 7 years, and then made me run to a nice desk job where I actually got a lunch break in which I finish a meal while it's still warm!
This book is a fascinating account of Chef Delucie's ascent to restaurant glory. We read about his dissatisfaction with life as a shady recruiter and how he made the decision to become a chef. Interspersed with the colorful details of the cook jobs that led up to him having his own restaurant, we read of the famous clientele he serves at his restaurant, The Waverly Inn, in Manhattan.
I find myself addicted to hearing about the gorgeous food he's preparing, and cringing from the conditions that he has had to work in...endless days on his feet, hot as hell stoves and fryers and grills to work behind. Yet, the adrenaline rush of the restaurant business is what kept me there for 7 years, and then made me run to a nice desk job where I actually got a lunch break in which I finish a meal while it's still warm!
January 3, 2012
This was definitely an interesting book, truthfully written and full of insights into the professional kitchens of New York. There's not a lot of sugar coating on anything in this book: personality, names, language, stupid mistakes, and more.
It reminds me of why I wouldn't enjoy a career as a chef in a professional, bustling, insane kitchen. It was also a bit demoralizing, and made me wonder if there were anybody in NY's restaurant industry who maintained high morals.
There were a number of editorial errors throughout the book, including sentences that after re-reading several times, still didn't make sense, and a few obvious misspellings, and so forth.
It had a relatively "happy ending," that left you hoping that maybe John had finally found his cup of tea, but the overall negative tone of the book mixed with general debauchery makes it a book that I can't recommend to anyone except those looking to enter a professional kitchen.
It reminds me of why I wouldn't enjoy a career as a chef in a professional, bustling, insane kitchen. It was also a bit demoralizing, and made me wonder if there were anybody in NY's restaurant industry who maintained high morals.
There were a number of editorial errors throughout the book, including sentences that after re-reading several times, still didn't make sense, and a few obvious misspellings, and so forth.
It had a relatively "happy ending," that left you hoping that maybe John had finally found his cup of tea, but the overall negative tone of the book mixed with general debauchery makes it a book that I can't recommend to anyone except those looking to enter a professional kitchen.
January 26, 2014
John DeLucie, then Waverly Inn chef, writes of this famous NY restaurant that was all the rage in 2008 when it didn't open and didn't take reservations. Graydon Carter created an exclusive celebrity club, with restricted membership, lots of rules and high prices. It was DeLucie's first restaurant as owner-partner, and he writes of his growing pains learning food costs and the importance of service. The intense pressure to succeed and the level of dedication required to run a successful restaurant is well described. DeLucie has since left The Waverly Inn and operates three Manhattan restaurants. The Waverly Inn now receives somewhat mixed reviews for food and service, and repeated sticker shock warnings.
December 18, 2010
I like this guy! Honest and so delightfully cheffy. Of course, this book totally made me want to check out the Waverly Inn, especially after the awesome story of the invention of their famous white truffle mac & cheese (shady alley truffle encounter? Check!). The stories of the celebrity diners are also super fun...my favorite was the visit from Karl Lagerfeld:
"When Lagerfeld spoke, it was silent enough in the clubby dining room for every last soul to hear his words. 'We have no questions at this table,' he announced. 'Only answers.'" p. 56
"When Lagerfeld spoke, it was silent enough in the clubby dining room for every last soul to hear his words. 'We have no questions at this table,' he announced. 'Only answers.'" p. 56
June 14, 2015
3.5 This was actually better than I'd expected, half a recounting of his career and half a less strictly chronological account of his then-current venture, interwoven. Of course the one involves a couple of trashed marriages and the other's an a-listers only not-technically-a-restaurant, though sketchy beginnings aside, his journey up the ranks is a respectably earned one and he seems to possess some degree of honest humility. I seriously doubt the world needed or wanted to hear the story of a second tier chef with moneyed connections, but it's at least a fairly well written one.
September 23, 2009
What I learned from this book? That I'm not a big fan of gruff, crass, unlikable narrators who name-drop foods and celebrities with equally mediocre writing skills.
Comparing a tough night in a kitchen to the Bataan Death March (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_D...)?
Give me a break.
Comparing a tough night in a kitchen to the Bataan Death March (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_D...)?
Give me a break.
September 15, 2010
This was a great memoir of how Delucie came to be the executive chef of The Waverly Inn in Greenwich Village. The restaurant business is an exclusive entity and if you have worked in a kitchen you can relate to John Delucie's co-workers/employees/employers. I'm a softy for foodie books and the industry and really enjoyed The Hunger.
September 7, 2011
I like a good story about hardworking folks who get fed up with their status quo corporate jobs and enter the near thankless culinary profession. Honestly. It's noble and from what I hear, far more enjoyable. Kudos John Delucie.
February 17, 2012
John DeLucie, serial name-dropper. I learned a valuable lesson about relying on the misleading "Advance Praise" from Salman Rushdie, Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, and Anthony Bourdain. They're all mentioned with admiration in the book.
September 22, 2009
Interesting overview of the NYC restaurant scene, in particular the Waverly Inn. It does bug me that the fact checkers didn't catch the mix up between Public Enemy (TWICE!) and NWA.
June 14, 2010
Having many years of waitressing behind me, I always enjoy cooking related memoirs! That restaurant business was crazy!
April 24, 2011
I have read a lot of chef's memoirs and with this last one I finally realized that the life of chef has no appeal.
April 22, 2011
a quick read about one man's path to chef-stardom. lots of nitty, gritty details, kitchen lore, and gossip. quite entertaining.
March 31, 2014
It has interesting bits and some truly useful information, but this memoir is basically a namedrop fest with an unlikable protagonist.
April 19, 2015
Great read for foodies
Wonderful window into the fast paced life of a chef. Enjoyed every page and makes me even more appreciative of my dinners out.
Wonderful window into the fast paced life of a chef. Enjoyed every page and makes me even more appreciative of my dinners out.
January 23, 2011
Made me hungry and respectful of chefs and their staffs.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews