High Bonnet A Novel of Epicurean Adventures

A first for the Modern Library Food series: a novel of the seething politics, subtle artistry, and enslavement to the palate that constitute life in a great restaurant kitchen.

"High Bonnet" refers to the chef's towering white toque, the mark of achievement every young sauce-stirrer aspires to. The young provincial Jean is thrown into a three-star kitchen for the most brutal of trainings after a famous voluptuary swoons over the bitter chocolate-scented sauce he'd ladled on her roast goose. Jean will win his high bonnet, and the royal bearing that accompanies it, but not until he's had many outrageous adventures in the kitchen and out of it. I can't recall another novel that organizes itself so completely around the art of cooking that succeeds as well as a story.

Idwal Jones was named Cordon Bleu Chef of the Wine and Food Society of Los Angeles. He was the author of the novels The Vineyard, Whistler's Van, and China Boy and Other Tales. He died in 1964.

Ruth Reichl, editor of the Modern Library Food series, is the author of the bestselling Tender at the Bone and the forthcoming Comfort Me with Apples. Formerly the food critic of The New York Times, she is now editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine.