Bleh, Chef
Yes, Chef had the potential to be good, but it desperately needed a better editor. There were sections of this book that seemed out of place, and the way that some of these stories were written came a cross as self serving and egocentric. Which while this is a memoir and kinda what memoirs are they didn't give the intended impact. When Samuelsson is talking about flavors it's great but when he's getting into other unrelated (or tangentially related) aspects of his life it starts to fall apart as a book. I also listened to the audiobook, and was surprise to find that Samuelsson was reading his own book, his own words, was a mistake. The syncopation of his reading made the issues in the book editing jump out but also made it somewhat grating at times. I had really high hopes for this book, I really agree with an appreciate Samuelsson's ideas of building, modernizing, and mixing flavors but on the page it just didn't work. (I read another review that mentioned that the book version of this didn't have any recipes in it, I'm really surprised by that, given that it's an industry norm for these kinds of books and probably would have been nice since he makes frequent references back to a few recipes)
