This book maybe wasn't what I was expecting, much more personal and family life than restaurant life, but it is a good memoir regardless. I'll definitely read more by Regan.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to review this title, but my reading interests have changed. I will not be finishing this book, but look forward to others in the future.

I always find the lives and drives of chefs interesting. I also appreciated reading about the author's upbringing and personal struggles. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

What an incredible memoir. This book is like a perfect Venn Diagram of interests: Memoir, Food, and overcoming obstacles and hope. An important telling a difficult childhood that has been cultivated into a wonderful life.

BURN THE PLACE by Iliana Regan was long-listed for National Book Award in 2019. The paperback version of this memoir was released in August 2020 and recounts Regan's experiences from making pasta at age four to running an award winning restaurant. Being a chef is only one element in her life story, though. This work focuses on her struggles with self-acceptance, sexual identity, and alcoholism during her journey. Here is a recent interview with her – it gives a sense of her fresh voice which is very evident in BURN THE PLACE, an accessible memoir dealing with important issues.

https://www.bustle.com/p/chef-iliana-regan-on-closing-her-restaurant-learning-to-cook-from-home-22810570

From the beginning this is a sensory driven account of life on a farm and all it entails. For Iliana it’s imprint has been life lasting. It is often idyllic in its retelling, and sometimes brutal in its reality. Here you have a chef who has embraced her faults and they have given her life its rollercoaster tilt. I had to keep reading if only to see how she survived. Set on her culinary course by a mother with innate talent and ability to produce high end fare with only those elements at hand. Iliana set her course early by watching her mother provide richly for her family with little to spare. A great memoir. Happy Reading

A memoir that takes us from the authors foraging non her families farm.Where she=fell in love with food.She then reveals her addiction s the hard times she fell into,Then her healing the amazing success her Michileb starred restaurant.Real open honest look at her life a revealing look at her personal road to being a chef,#netgalley#scribners

There were bits and pieces strewn about that had a Ruth Reichl feel. The sizzling and pop of butter, food as a balm. Learning at the knee of her mom. Memoirs are always hard to rate because the author isn't an author by trade most is the time; they are people in other professions with demons and scars but dreams and success. To be true you have to mesh that all together. This book tried but didn't exactly hit the notes Id have preferred when reading about trauma and triumph through food.

Regan examines her past utilizing the perspectives and recollections of family members with precise and transparency. Her family—flawed— is the canon she is ejected from has fostered a deep connection and understanding of food, terroir, and process from the ground up. As a child, Regan is not spared from the horrors of gutted sources of protein, or the resentment on behalf of her mother for living an unfulfilled life. She witnesses many paths for women via her sisters, friends, crushes, mother and grandmother and chooses none of them. Regan experiments with gender fluidity, substance and social recklessness as she wanders away from her home and into deeper into the culinary landscape. This is the story of her self definition, food philosophy, and individuation. It’s a rocky road, studded with emotional and physical violence. This memoir represents that moment when one asks oneself, “Is it worth it?” which in Regan’s case happens with some frequency. What is compelling and sustaining is the author’s voice. She speaks an unadulterated pure truth. Regan’s memoir is visceral, detailed and focused on the shifting nature of life. Regan narrates with tender observation, quirkiness, raw beauty, love and acceptance. Regan’s is a midwestern story of Gary Indiana and a wee bit of Chicago. It’s the story of fallen successes and the smoking phoenixes was using fro the ash. Worth every page and every real minute invested.

Sorry, this book is just not for me. I made it through the first half, and it really seemed to not be going anywhere. I didn’t like the author, the other characters, or the plot (what little there was of it). I found it to be boring and unsatisfying. I don’t want to penalize the author, I realize how hard it must have been to put her life story out there. Therefore, I will not be posting a review anywhere. Good luck to the author.

I expected this book to be different than it was - more about cooking and the pressures/stressors/delights of a culinary life, and less about fending off the pull of self-destruction. It just felt dark and angry. I guess the title should have warned me of this.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This memoir about food and family has some very moving parts to it. I loved the description of the farm where she grew up, of how her love for food came to be in the backdrop of hunting for mushrooms and baking bread with her uncle. There just seemed to be maybe a bit too much going on in the book at once? She writes about her alcoholism very honestly, but it's a bit one fact after another, and her sudden leap into sobriety wasn't really examined closely. Her family's history of struggling with addiction and other unhealthy habits was dealt with a bit on the surface level. And then all of a sudden we rush headlong into what it's like to start a business. And start another business and fail at it. This is where I really wanted to dive in--I wanted to hear about trying to create a restaurant from nothing, but we only get glimpses of that journey. I found the brief sentences about the misogyny and homophobia in the restaurant business compelling, but there weren't that many of them. I do think that the story here is worth telling and reading about, but I only wish there was more.