32 Yolks: From My Mother's Table to Working the Line

Readers may know Ripert as the meditative host of the PBS series Avec Eric; a fan-favorite judge on Bravo's Top Chef; and the owner of Le Bernardin, a French seafood restaurant in New York. His roots, however, are far from that calm and thoughtful adult. This memoir tells of Ripert's tumultuous childhood in France where a love of excellent food was instilled in him early on. In his preteens, he was taken under the wing of a professional chef. Food and cooking were an escape for Ripert, though the stress of professional kitchens steeped him in almost unmanageable levels of fear and desperation. The militaristic attitude in three-star restaurants, as Ripert describes it, is physically and mentally grueling. Despite the difficulties, Ripert knew cooking was his calling and he likens talented chefs to having the creative genius of composers Wolfgang Mozart and Frédéric Chopin.