The Fourth Star: Dispatches from Inside Daniel Boulud's Celebrated New York Restaurant

For foodies, restaurant fans and restaurant workers, chefs and chef-wannabes, and for everyone who devoured Kitchen Confidential, here is a revealing look at what goes on behind the scenes at the world-renowned Restaurant Daniel as chef/owner Daniel Boulud strives for perfection–and for the New York Times’ top four-star rating.

The hushed, elegant atmosphere of a fine restaurant often conceals an intensely stressful workplace where highly trained, underpaid staffers work backbreaking hours against impossible dead-lines, often at the whim of a driven and demanding yet creatively gifted boss. New York’s Restaurant Daniel is one such place. With the complete cooperation of Chef Daniel Boulud, author Leslie Brenner spent a full year at the restaurant, getting to know the staff in the kitchen, the front of the house, and the manager’s office. And she reports on it all with a vivid immediacy: the maître d’ shuffling reservations when a VIP shows up unannounced, the young pastry chef who gets passed over for a promotion (and then gets the last laugh), even the financial arrangements that keep the restaurant’s doors open for business. And underlying all the daily drama is Chef Boulud’s obsession with getting a fourth star from the New York Times.