About this item
AS SEEN IN THE NEW DOCUMENTARY JEREMIAH TOWER: THE LAST MAGNIFICENTNewly revised and reissued to coincide with The Last Magnificent, a documentary feature produced by Anthony Bourdain, the indelible and entertaining memoir from Jeremiah Tower which chronicles life at the front lines of redefining modern American cuisine.Widely recognized as the godfather of modern American cooking, Jeremiah Tower is one of the most influential cooks of the last forty years. In 2004, he rocked the culinary world with a tell-all story of his lifelong love affair with food, and the restaurants and people along the way.In this newly revised edition of his memoir, retitled Start the Fire, Tower shares with wit and honesty his insights into cooking, chefs, celebrities, and what really goes on in the kitchen. Above all, Tower rhapsodizes about food - the meals choreographed like great ballets, the menus scored like concertos. No other book reveals more about the seeds sown in the seventies, the excesses of the eighties, and the self-congratulations of the nineties.With a new introduction by the author, Start the Fire is an essential account of the most important years in the history of American cooking, from one of its singular personalities.
About the Author
JEREMIAH TOWER: BIOGRAPHY & CAREER
October, 2016
Jeremiah Tower was born in the United States, educated in Australia, England, France and the United States, and is now an acclaimed authority on food and restaurant hospitality.
He began his culinary career in 1972-1978 as co-owner and executive chef of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. After the Balboa Café in Francisco, the Santa Fe Bar & Grill in Berkeley, and Ventana in Big Sur from 1978-1984, Jeremiah opened and owned several other successful and highly acclaimed restaurants in San Francisco (Stars, Stars Café, Speedo 690) , Hong Kong (The Peak Café) , Singapore (Stars) and Seattle (Stars) . Jeremiah sold the Stars restaurants to an Asian group in 1998.
Tower then moved to New York to pursue new projects. After four books and 26 shows for a PBS series, he moved to Italy and Mexico to SCUBA dive and research material for further books.
Jeremiah has written several cookbooks, starting in 1980 as assistant and sometimes co-author with Richard Olney of the Time Life Books' thirty volumes of The Good Cook. Featured in the TV series The Great Chefs of San Francisco. In 1986 he published the very successful and James Beard Foundation winner Jeremiah Tower's New American Classics (Harper & Row) . In 1995 he contributed to The Artist's Table for the National Gallery of Art. His cookbook, Jeremiah Tower Cooks, was published by Stewart Tabori & Chang in the fall of 2002, and reprinted in June, 2003 and received national press as well as "best cookbook of the year" from Australian Vogue Entertaining. California Dish, a book on the history of the American dining revolution that started in California, was released by Simon & Schuster in 2003 and in 2004 as a paperback.Awarded one of "ten best culinary memoirs" in 2013. America's Best Chefs with Jeremiah Tower, the companion book for Tower's 26 shows on PBS, was released by John Wiley & sons also in 2003. He then revised and edited Henri-Paul Pellaprat's (for years head of the Cordon Bleu school in Paris) 800-recipe and masterpiece cookbook of classic French cuisine, which was released by Vendome Press in late 2003 as The Great Book of French Cuisine. Also published in late 2003 was his chapter for David and Jean Halberstam's Defining a Nation for Tehabi Press and the National Geographic, and Cooking the Costco Way, for which Jeremiah was the consultant for the California chapter. In 2004 Tower wrote the Foreword to James Villas' Stalking the Green Fairy. He has also written several articles for magazines, as well as restaurant guides for London, Paris, New York and San Francisco, and was featured in the 2001 Christmas cover story for Food & Wine. From 2000 to 2004 he was a weekly columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, and contributed to The Financial Times Weekend. In that period he also wrote Forwards for The Complete Book of
