In Mincemeat: The Education of an Italian Chef, debut author and chef Leonardo Lucarelli chronicles a haphazard career in professional kitchens throughout Italy, working long hours amid inept sous chefs, illegal dishwashers and unscrupulous owners, and lots of sex and prodigious amounts of drugs. It's not the first version of this story we've seen, but it's one of the most personal and heartfelt.
Lucarelli is not a celebrity chef; he freely admits to stumbling into his profession. Born to hippie parents in India and raised in Umbria, he went to college to study anthropology and started throwing dinner parties for friends. He lucked into his first real restaurant job with a chef who didn't examine his résumé too closely. After that, Lucarelli careened from one failing restaurant to another, gradually honing his skills and his tolerance for drugs and alcohol.
If there is a theme in Mincemeat, it's the accidental nature of fate. Lucarelli goes wherever chance and opportunity take him, knowing that, at his level, a chef's skills are fungible. His writing is genial and breathless; he veers between ardent stoicism and comic indignation. The people he writes about are what give the memoir shape and make it--and his career--meaningful. He lovingly describes friendships with a care and attention usually reserved for lovers. That's what makes Mincemeat sing. Lucarelli's sensitivity and sincerity sets him apart, and will keep him in good stead if he continues to write. --Zak Nelson