RaveSpectrum Culture\"Friedman has a charming, light touch as a writer, like a friend who subtly encourages you to try an unexpected restaurant while making you feel like you’ve discovered it on your own. He peppers his prose with ample quotes from a host of subjects who offer vivid, at times hazy and often conflicting recollections of their formative experiences in the restaurant world, lending an oral history quality to the book that itself mirrors the hustle-and-bustle of a busy kitchen ... Friedman does the reader a great service by not focusing exclusively on the figures that are now near-ubiquitous, as though they had sprung phoenix-like out of nothing, but rather opts to give a much more interesting, panoramic sense of the milieu in which they originated and helped shape ... Those not already well-versed in the names and places Friedman describes with such contagious enthusiasm should probably read chapters out of order, according to one’s inclinations. Tackled consecutively, the book at times feels like a series of sprawling magazine features, so thorough and minutiae-oriented is Friedman’s approach.\
