New York Times book critic Dwight Garner pulls precisely zero punches in his gleefully devastating review of Colman Andrews’s biography of Ferran Adrià, Ferran, a book he says is so fawning and hagiographic that it “lays on the cream sauce with a heavy hand.” Yes, it’s a terrific piece of balls-out criticism — and the paragraph where Garner tears into Adrià himself is a master class in paralepsis — but oh, the zingers! “Reading “Ferran” is like being waterboarded with truffle oil,” writes Garner. Elsewhere: “Good luck getting a reservation at his restaurant … Good luck, too, wading through more than 50 pages of ‘Ferran.’ Mr. Andrews’s awestruck observations are an appetite suppressant.” You can test your mettle against the first nine pages, which the Times helpfully includes as a PDF excerpt. Feel free to report back with your page count (and related thoughts) in the comments.
A Chef as Visionary, Poet and Chemist [NYT]
Ferran Excerpt [PDF]
