Don't Be a Donkey

Lessons Learned from Chef Gordon Ramsey

De: Chadd McArthur

Narrado por: Chadd McArthur

Don't be a Donkey is a true story about the life and career of Chef Chadd McArthur. It is about the lessons, about both kitchen and life, that he learned while working for Gordon Ramsay. Eighteen hours a day, five days a week...when you work with a great chef and leader that much, his wisdom will rub off on you, and at times traumatize you. The lessons learned will stick with Chef McArthur for the rest of his life, and now, with funny stories and clever insights into working with one of the world's most well-known chefs, he's sharing them in this very audiobook. From having Chef Gordon Ramsay himself fling a ravioli at him, to the integrity with which Ramsay dealt with the death of a colleague, Chef McArthur has a lot to tell about his three years spent working in Ramsay's flagship restaurant in London, sometimes directly under the man himself. Each chapter also includes a recipe, some created wholly by the author, and some influenced by Chef Ramsay's own signature dishes. Enjoy this fresh new take on Gordon Ramsay, and the challenges of a chef who survived Ramsay's kitchen for years.

©2013 Chadd McArthur (P)2013 Gildan Media LLC

A LITTLE RAMBLING

While as a chef/restaurateur myself, I appreciate what Chadd is trying to do here. But overall this title is a little rambling and never really establishes a real narrative or clear point. I believe he would have been better served either writing a straight memoir of working under Ramsey or writing his own autobiography, not mix the two in a muddled mashup. Also again while I appreciate wanting to read something you have put hours upon hours of difficult work in to, I think his writing would have been much better served under the skills of a professional voice actor/narrator. If you are looking for a hard hitting dive in to working with one of the most televised modern chefs, this is not it. If you are looking for an interesting biography of a chef just below the level of public fame, this is also not it. If you are wanting something to spend almost four hours listening to while you drive or work that has some interesting segments and and a few laughs but wont distract you, this might do the trick.

Still A Donkey

I write this as a lighthearted jab to the author. The book was pretty OK. Several good stories with a few stories about the man, the myth, the legend that is Gordon Ramsay. I would have enjoyed the book way more with a professional narrator or at least a half decent one. I applaud the author for trying but his Canadian accent with random British slang was not appealing to my ears.

Just not interesting. boring.

Would you try another book from Chadd McArthur and/or Chadd McArthur?

No storey here. Just trying to sell books off of someone one elses reputation. Boring and a big snoozer.

Written by a ten year old

It isn’t the stop and start, too earnest performance (by the author) that dooms this book. It’s the author’s complete lack of writing talent combined with his utter dearth of anything remotely interesting to say. It reads like a fourth-grade book report, and not a report by one of the smarter kids in the class. I’ll be brief:

1. The writing is atrocious. Really, really bad. The frequent cliches become unintentionally silly, so I don’t mean those. It’s the rest—the total inability to string interesting words together. This isn’t the book’s most serious sin; that’s it’s missing content. But interesting writing will help paper over platitudes and generalizations. Not here. There is not a single well-written sentence in the entire book.

2. There is no content. I’m not saying that the content is dumb. I mean, there is dumb content, but there isn’t even much of that. It’s just content free. Even the personal stories, like the chef’s visit to Spain, falls into generalizations about Spanish culture that may have been borrowed from a 1983 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia. For whatever reason, the author displays a total inability to say anything interesting.

3. The performance is ridiculous. The author seems continually surprised by his own words. “A server and I went to cater a function in a very wealthy neighborhood in Toronto. For an event for potentially one of my most wealthy clients.” These aren’t two sentences, but they’re spoken as two, because the author doesn’t realize the second part is coming until he sees it.

There’s no question that the author thinks he has a lot to say. He thinks he has lessons to teach. He may not even know that he forgot to put any of that in the book.

I’m angry that I spent any money and time on this book. Please don’t. If you’re thinking of ignoring this review, try this: Find a way—google books, Amazon preview, local bookstore, whatever—to open the book to any page and read two paragraphs. You’ll see how bad the entire book is and avoid wasting your time any further.