Bill Buford recounts his exhilarating and adrenaline-inducing experiences working in the kitchen of Mario Batali, star chef and owner of Babbo restaurant in New York, and as a butcher's assistant in Tuscany. Buford, who was fiction editor at The New Yorker for eight years, writes of the trials of starting at the bottom of the totem pole, the competition of the kitchen, and his love for Italian cuisine.
The Monitor reviewed "Heat" in 2006.