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BLOOD, BONES & BUTTER: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef  By Gabrielle Hamilton. Random House. 291 pages. $24

By Nona Nelson
nona.nelson@roanoke.com

The blurb on the cover of Gabrielle Hamilton’s memoir is attributed to writer and chef Anthony Bourdain, and it declares that her book is “Simply the best memoir by a chef ever. Ever.”

Bourdain has a habit of hyperbole, but praise of Hamilton’s work is indeed well-deserved.

“Blood, Bones & Butter” is more than a history of a noted chef’s rise to prominence in the toughest of all American dining scenes, New York City. It is more than a recap of the 45-year-old writer, mother and restaurant owner’s life.

It is a painfully honest look at pivotal moments that shaped this woman, the mistakes she made and the work ethic that guided her, and how her respect for food — and the loving act of feeding people — is intrinsically woven into all of it.

Hamilton writes about her childhood, which seemed idyllic until it came to a jarring halt. Her American father, a theatrical set designer and artist; her French mother, a former ballerina; and four siblings lived in a house formed out of the ruins of a burned-out mill in rural Pennsylvania. Hamilton thought her family was happy until the day her mother announced she was leaving.
At the time of the her parents’ split, her siblings were college-age or close to it, but Hamilton was only 11. She writes that she had the “tremendous timing to hit adolescence just as the family was disintegrating.” Her brothers and her sister moved on. Her mother moved to Vermont. Her father was largely absent.

This was a child forgotten, left to fend for herself with little or no guidance. Her parents’ neglect was unconscionable if not criminal. Hamilton did what she had to do to survive, including working in a variety of restaurants, shoplifting clothes and dabbling in drugs — by the time she was 13 years old.

While larceny and other criminal behavior did not become lifelong habits, cooking and working in kitchens did.
She graduated high school early and drifted in and out of college, but finally finished her bachelor’s degree. She never attended culinary school; she earned her chef credentials working as a freelancer in New York’s catering kitchens.
In search of personal fulfilment, she earned a master’s degree in fiction writing from the University of Michigan but returned to New York to open her restaurant, Prune.

Chef Gabrielle Hamilton

While this is a memoir of a chef, Hamilton’s story is about her life experiences and her relationships with family — food being the thread that ties them all together.
Food is intimately related to her sense of self — the abundance of it and the scarcity of it — and her connection to people. This is a woman who has been homeless and starving, and who demonstrates in lyrical prose what it feels like to be alone and abandoned, and what it feels like to be cared for and comforted.

These are the influences that have formed her culinary point of view and what she wants to translate to her menu at Prune — to take “pivotal experiences with food — including hunger and worry — and translate those experiences into actual plates of food.”
Information in “Blood, Bones & Butter” is not dispensed like traditional menu courses — salad, entree, dessert. While the book starts in childhood, Hamilton then mixes it up, serving her vignettes in slightly random order and occasionally tossing the reader crumbs of autobiographical detail — her children are mentioned before their births are announced, living abroad is hinted at before the whole story emerge in a later chapter.

In the hands of a less capable writer, this could be a mess. But Hamilton manages to weave a complex narrative that keeps the reader engaged without being incoherent. Think of it as literary tapas: small servings dished out in an intriguing, if not linear, order.
She writes about her difficult marriage, her longing for a permanent connection to her husband’s Italian family and an attempt to reconnect with her estranged mother. It is refreshing to read a memoir that can subtly show the reader familial tension without casting anyone as a villain.

She devotes a brief chapter to being a woman in a male-dominated field. She writes that cooking, like any profession, should be about doing the best possible work and, while it can be extremely difficult for women to balance work and family life, the talent required to multi-task in the kitchen can create a more competent and confident parent.

Unlike many chefs-turned-writers who wax poetic about “slow food” and other popular movements, Hamilton takes a more pragmatic view. Locally grown produce is great when it can be found; it can also be very limited in selection and quality. Canned beans are a perfectly acceptable ingredient. Food shouldn’t be just a trend of the hipster culture, she reasons, it should be simpler than that. She wonders if we have forgotten “what it’s like to be a good eater and a good grower,” and she longs for “a time when we just grew it and cooked it and ate it and didn’t talk so much about it … when we didn’t crow all over town about our artisanal, local, organic.”

“Blood, Bones & Butter” will appeal to foodies, but it’s more of a satisfying a story of family and survival by a gifted writer than it is a journal of menus and gastronomical trends.

(Photo by Melissa Hamilton; courtesy of Random House)