NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR
In an industry where celebrity chefs are known as much for their salty talk and quick tempers as their food, Eric Ripert stands out. The winner of four James Beard Awards, co-owner and chef of a world-renowned restaurant, and recipient of countless Michelin stars, Ripert embodies elegance and culinary perfection. But before the accolades, before he even knew how to make a proper hollandaise sauce, Eric Ripert was a lonely young boy in the south of France whose life was falling apart.
Ripert’s parents divorced when he was six, separating him from the father he idolized and replacing him with a cold, bullying stepfather who insisted that Ripert be sent away to boarding school. A few years later, Ripert’s father died on a hiking trip. Through these tough times, the one thing that gave Ripert comfort was food. Told that boys had no place in the kitchen, Ripert would instead watch from the doorway as his mother rolled couscous by hand or his grandmother pressed out the buttery dough for the treat he loved above all others, tarte aux pommes. When an eccentric local chef took him under his wing, an eleven-year-old Ripert realized that food was more than just an escape: It was his calling. That passion would carry him through the drudgery of culinary school and into the high-pressure world of Paris’s most elite restaurants, where Ripert discovered that learning to cook was the easy part—surviving the line was the battle.
Taking us from Eric Ripert’s childhood in the south of France and the mountains of Andorra into the demanding kitchens of such legendary Parisian chefs as Joël Robuchon and Dominique Bouchet, until, at the age of twenty-four, Ripert made his way to the United States, 32 Yolks is the tender and richly told story of how one of our greatest living chefs found himself—and his home—in the kitchen.
Praise for 32 Yolks
“Passionate, poetical . . . What makes 32 Yolks compelling is the honesty and laudable humility Ripert brings to the telling.”—Chicago Tribune
“With a vulnerability and honesty that is breathtaking . . . Ripert takes us into the mind of a boy with thoughts so sweet they will cause you to weep.”—The Wall Street Journal
Author
Eric Ripert
Eric Ripert is the chef and co-owner of New York’s internationally acclaimed seafood restaurant Le Bernardin, which has held three stars from the Michelin Guide since 2005 and has maintained a four-star rating from The New York Times for over 20 years. He is Vice Chairman of the board at City Harvest, the world’s first and New York City’s largest food rescue organization dedicated to feeding New Yorkers in need, as well as a recipient of the Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest honor. He previously served as a regular guest judge on Bravo’s Top Chef and hosted his own TV series from 2009 to 2015, Avec Eric, which has won Emmy and James Beard awards. Ripert is the author of six cookbooks, including The New York Times bestsellers Seafood Simple and Vegetable Simple, as well as My Best: Eric Ripert, Avec Eric, On the Line, A Return to Cooking, and Le Bernardin: Four Star Simplicity, and a New York Times bestselling memoir, 32 Yolks: From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line.
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Veronica Chambers
Veronica Chambers is a prolific author, best known for her critically acclaimed memoir Mama’s Girl. She coauthored the award-winning memoir Yes, Chef with chef Marcus Samuelsson, as well as Samuelsson’s young-adult memoir Make It Messy, and has collaborated on four New York Times bestsellers, most recently 32 Yolks, which she cowrote with chef Eric Ripert. She has been a senior editor at the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, and Glamour. Born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, she writes often about her Afro-Latina heritage. She speaks, reads, and writes Spanish, but she is truly fluent in Spanglish. She is currently a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University. Her upcoming novel is The Go-Between.
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