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Paperback
Culinary BiographiesBiographies GeneralFood Writing
Publisher: Alex Fenot
Published: Oct 15 2025
Pages: 306
Weight: 0.91
Height: 0.69 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Take a splash of Italian, a dash of Polish, and a hint of Normandy, and you have me. A mutt seasoned with salted butter.
Stubborn, proud, hard-headed, and vindictive.
Perfumed by the smell of French baguettes and bad intentions, my life adds up to bad decisions, countless mistakes, and an inconsistency that borders on genius.
I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but it was full of shit, so I did what I do in my kitchen. I changed the menu.
Model at twenty years old, restaurant GM at thirty, executive chef at forty... In between: drugs, alcohol, car crashes, spectacular resignations, and relapses. I didn't just hit rock bottom. I took a fucking lease there.
That's my story-the journey of a magnificent idiot who wasn't looking for a job. but a shelter. A family... And I found it in hospitality.
This is thirty years of my life in restaurants on both sides of the Atlantic-Paris, London, Saint-Barths., and Miami-with multi-million-dollar restaurants that close after six months, influencers who photograph but don't eat, and people allergic to happiness.
All this, told without anesthesia and music running through it all. Because food is music you chew.
Here, you'll run into line cooks on the edge of collapse and burned-out servers. Grumpy chefs and heroic sous-chefs. Friends, glorious idiots, and random ghosts passing through. Hellish services, glamorized burnouts, endless days, and pain-in-the-ass customers.
But also moments of absolute grace. A gang of maniacs bonded with napalm, gods in white, a kamikaze in high heels, and even a goddamn dog that knows more about love and loyalty than most people.
No glitter. No Netflix. Just my truth-raw with a lot of guitar. The quest of a man searching for his dignity, the kind you lose in drugs and booze and stitch back together with the tip of a chef's knife.
Bring your broken hearts.
Your ridiculous demands,
and your bullshit requests.
The chef is waiting, knives sharpened.
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