Blood, Bones & Butter

The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

By: Gabrielle Hamilton

Narrated by: Gabrielle Hamilton

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Miami Herald • Newsday • The Huffington Post • Financial Times • GQ • Slate • Men’s Journal • Washington Examiner • Publishers Weekly • Kirkus Reviews • National Post • The Toronto Star • BookPage • Bookreporter

“I wanted the lettuce and eggs at room temperature . . . the butter-and-sugar sandwiches we ate after school for snack . . . the marrow bones my mother made us eat as kids that I grew to crave as an adult. . . . There would be no ‘conceptual’ or ‘intellectual’ food, just the salty, sweet, starchy, brothy, crispy things that one craves when one is actually hungry. In ecstatic farewell to my years of corporate catering, we would never serve anything but a martini in a martini glass. Preferably gin.”

Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty fierce, hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. Above all she sought family, particularly the thrill and the magnificence of the one from her childhood that, in her adult years, eluded her. Hamilton’s ease and comfort in a kitchen were instilled in her at an early age when her parents hosted grand parties, often for more than one hundred friends and neighbors. The smells of spit-roasted lamb, apple wood smoke, and rosemary garlic marinade became as necessary to her as her own skin.

Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; the soulless catering factories that helped pay the rent; Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family—the result of a difficult and prickly marriage that nonetheless yields rich and lasting dividends.

Blood, Bones & Butter is an unflinching and lyrical work. Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion. By turns epic and intimate, it marks the debut of a tremendous literary talent.

Critic reviews

“Magnificent. Simply the best memoir by a chef ever. Ever. Gabrielle Hamilton packs more heart, soul, and pure power into one beautifully crafted page than I’ve accomplished in my entire writing career. Blood, Bones & Butter is the work of an uncompromising chef and a prodigiously talented writer. I am choked with envy.”—Anthony Bourdain

“Gabrielle Hamilton has changed the potential and raised the bar for all books about eating and cooking. Her nearly rabid love for all real food experience and her completely vulnerable, unprotected yet pure point of view unveils itself in both truth and inspiration. I will read this book to my children and then burn all the books I have written for pretending to be anything even close to this. After that I will apply for the dishwasher job at Prune to learn from my new queen.”—Mario Batali

“I have long considered Gabrielle Hamilton a writer in cook’s clothing, and this deliciously complex and intriguing memoir proves the point. Her candor, courage, and craft make for a wonderful read but, even more, for an appreciation of her talent and dedication, which have resulted from her often trying but inspiring experiences. Her writing is every bit as delectable and satisfying as her food.”—Mimi Sheraton, food critic and author of The German Cookbook and Eating My Words


"[A] lusty, rollicking, engaging-from-page-one memoir of the chef-owner of Prune restaurant in New York’s East Village. Hamilton opened her eating establishment without any prior experience in cheffing, but the life experiences she did have before that bold move, told here in honest detail, obviously made up for any deficiencies in heading up a restaurant and also provide material for an electric story that is interesting even if the author hadn’t become the chef-owner of a successful restaurant. An idyllic childhood turned sour when her parents divorced; her adolescence and young womanhood encompassed drugs, menial jobs, and lack of direction and initiative when it came to continued education. All’s well that ends well, however, and her story does indeed do that. Add this to the shelf of chef memoirs but also recommend it to readers with a penchant for forthright, well-written memoirs in general." – Booklist

A sensory feast

As one reviewer on Amazon said, this is one of those books that must be savored in one sitting. Bourdain was most definitely not paying mere lip service when he claimed to be "choked with envy". The story is like one luxurious feast prepared by a chef who does not mince words, and who may strike some (even the new fan that I am) as rather grating at times. But the book would have been better served by a professional reader (w/ the author reading the foreword or a brief intro to the book), although the narration did improve in the second part of the book.

Gets to the meat of things.

Well-written, sharp, wry, sarcastic, genuine, at times heartbreaking, and full of a lifer's experience as a restaraunteur. Gabrielle Hamilton is not to be missed - nor messed with. From the quickly described recipes to climbing the oleander for Mama, Gabrielle poingantly describes her life's journey as a daughter, mother, sister, chef, writer and woman - she'll have you laughing right along with her.

Ingesting 'Blood, Bones and Butter'

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, by Gabrielle Hamilton, is not the typical chef, restaurant or food book. With Hamilton, food is always a metaphor for relationships (usually screwed up).

If you are like me, you probably started with Kitchen Confidential, maybe moved on to Heat, took a detour with Waiter Rant, and now too often find yourself absorbed in food porn on the Food Network.

I'll most likely never eat at Hamilton's NYC restaurant, Prune (her childhood nickname from a now estranged mother). Prune's food sounds delicious, the anti-foodie culture refreshing, but I doubt I'm hip enough or knowledgeable enough about food to appreciate her cooking.

Reading Blood, Bones & Butter is as close as I'll get to Hamilton's cooking, and the sensual experience that I imagine Prune provides. This is a book about how a person with deep relationship issues, issues with roots is a dysfunctional and then broken family, can simultaneously succeed gloriously (in both cooking/restauranteering and writing), and fail spectacularly (at creating a marriage). Hamilton is ballsy enough to provide us something of an unvarnished glimpse into the most brutal and ugly aspects of dining out (particularly catering food), and marriage.

Blood, Bones & Butter will be polarizing. Some readers will love it (I did), some will find Hamilton so unappealing as a personality that the book will leave a bad aftertaste. Some people will feel both at once. Whatever the verdict, I think everyone will agree that Hamilton can flat-out write.

Absolutely gorgeous...

I have been too often disappointed by a poorly-read memoir, but I heartily disagree with those who said this author shouldn't have narrated this book. I don't think anyone could have read it with more truth and with the same honest edge and unpretentious approach that she brings to her kitchen, her table, her book. I enjoyed taking this journey with her, in her words, in her voice. I too am "choked with envy".

Brilliance in the kitchen and in the writing

Loved watching Gabrielle on Mind of a Chef and knew this would be great to listen to. Perfect trio of her story, her writing and reading. Highly recommend.