The Devil in the Kitchen

I'm sure that Marco White — the most honored chef in English history and head of a celebrated restaurant empire — is a really interesting person. He was the original bad-boy chef, a man who relentlessly abused his staff, engaged in kitchen fisticuffs, and hurtled through tumultuous relationships long before the Bourdains and Ramseys of the culinary world made it fashionable. Trouble is, in The Devil in the Kitchen, he's somehow found a way to make all his transgressions seem, well, boring. Perhaps it's the self-congratulatory prose (he calls a confrontation with former protégé Gordon Ramsey ''worthy of a standing ovation'') or the fact that he skims over potentially fascinating portions of his life (his two divorces barely merit a few pages). Either way, Devil reads as slowly as waiting for water to boil. C-