Kitchen Con by Trevor White

"NOT another Michael Moore effort at infotainment. . ."

Kitchen Con: Food, gossip, news, and history behind the pass.

Chefs who have achieved celebrity status and the history behind the Michelin stars and the Zagat guide are just a small part of Trevor White’s Kitchen Con. The book has as much to do with confidential news and views as the big restaurant Con.

White grew up in the food industry in a restaurant owned and operated by his family. He then became a journalist and critic of high end restaurants and all things costly, including a millionaires’ guide to the best of the best in Europe and America. Building on a solid base of cooking and writing knowledge, White turns his eye the mysterious—and not so mysterious—food world the rest of us only see in the news. Kitchen Con is not another Michael Moore effort at infotainment or an expose on par with Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me. Instead, White gives a more rational and candid look at food, restaurants, chefs, and food journalism backed up with interviews and conversation transcripts.

What White does best is not just telling the secrets behind the inflated costs and habits of the chefs and wait staff to shock and dismay. Instead he offers an inside view of what is best – and worst – about restaurants and food journalism without hype and justification. Kitchen Con is witty, irreverent and straightforward (most of the time) with a dash of tongue in cheek and a soupçon of erudition that bears reading again and again.

Reviewer: J. M. Cornwell