Gillian Clark chased her dream of being head chef in an upscale restaurant where she could serve sophisticated food her way. When she started a career in the culinary arts, her children were young and her marriage was ending. Could she be both a good chef and a good mother? In her memoir, Out of the frying Pan, she highlights similarities between running a kitchen and raising children while chronicling her work-life behind kitchen doors.
The title (from the saying “out of the frying pan and into the fire”) fits the overall mood of these essays that recount the hard work and the literal heat that she faces on the job. Each chapter, which includes recipes, loosely brings together aspects of motherhood and career with different themes such as discipline (techniques for parenting both the kitchen crew and her daughters), finding oneself, and letting go/moving on.
Clark covers a big span of time and at some parts she sums up her experiences instead of giving us detailed account. The first chapter covers her first three cook jobs and feels a little like being rushed through a buffet line. During this part she has her first honorable recognition: the soup of the day test. I would’ve liked to linger in the moment and savor her triumph but that is not her style. Maybe that is because she never lets herself slow down or take it easy. Chapter three has a less harried pace, giving us some family background and telling how she came to love food as a child. This chapter is aptly called “Food equals love to a would-be chef.” Chapter five is titled “Earning each gray hair” but maybe should have been called “outsmarting,” since it is about how she sometimes had to outsmart her boss and children to get the right results. In chapter six, I would have liked to hear about the young cooks that she mentored through the years. She only briefly mentions how some have gone on to make her proud and others didn’t live up to their potential.
Passionate when speaking about food, urbane and unsentimental when presenting her experiences in the high-end food industry, Clark’s perfectionism and no-nonsense attitude comes across on every page. As when she pushes her kitchen crew to higher standards, telling them “the food is more important than your feelings.” Nowhere between the covers of the book will you find a thought that indulges in self-pity, only a reflection now and then on the direction of her life and how she can make it better. She has a practical attitude that carries over into her parenting. “Running a functional kitchen was more like parenting than I’d ever imagined.”
Readers will root for Clark as she makes her way to running her very own successful restaurant. Entrepreneurs, single moms, and people interested in culinary books will be inspired by Clark’s strong work ethic and fascinated by her story. As with most foodie memoirs, this would not appeal to vegetarians, as Clark ruminates on “hamburger art” and the splendor of fois gras.
Gillian Clark owns Colorado Kitchen in Washington D.C., which has been featured on the Food Network, in The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Click Here To Purchase Out Of The Frying Pan
The above review has been contributed by: Sonia Reppe: Sonia holds a B.A. in vocal performance, gives voice lessons in the Chicago area and spends most of her time reading and taking care of her daughter, husband and cats.
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