SOUS CHEF 24 Hours on the Line

Gibney, who reads his own introduction, takes listeners into the kitchen of an upscale city restaurant, showing the unglamorous world of a professional sous chef. Although the author's intro is lackluster, narrator Fred Berman's enthusiastic performance not only emphasizes the nonstop action and drama of working the line but holds listeners' attention as the cooks prepare for the evening service. This day-in-the-life approach covers the gamut of the sous chef's responsibilities, including prepping food, overseeing the line cooks, explaining the menu to the wait staff, and maintaining the quality of the dishes. Berman sustains his energy and expressiveness even throughout the descriptive passages that focus on restaurant minutiae, and his pronunciations of the technical and foreign terms are generally spot-on. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2014]