Dining Out: Secrets from America's Leading Critics, Chefs, and Restaurateurs

Meet the people behind the restaurants and the reviews, and learn how their insight can help turn your next meal out, into a world-class dining event. For generations, chefs, restaurateurs and food enthusiasts have watched their world revolve around a small but enormously powerful cabal known simply as "restaurant reviewers." In their new book, Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page leave the kitchen for the dining room, to shine a light on the world of the culinary critics, shadowy figures often dining incognito, whose public judgments can make or break a restaurant. Drawing on interviews with the nation's most important critics including Ruth Reichl of the New York Times, Phyllis Richman of The Washington Post, and Dennis Ray Wheaton of Chicago Magazine, as well as celebrity chefs and restaurateurs, Dornenburg and Page serve up a rare look into the reviewing process, and reveal some of the pros' secrets for creating-and enjoying-a four-star dining experience. Chefs and restaurateurs are offered inside information on how to create a "four-star" dining experience. * First time exposure of the mysterious food critic. Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page (both of New York City) are the authors of the best selling titles Becoming a Chef and Culinary Artistry. Their first book, Becoming a Chef, won the 1996 James Beard Award for Best Writing on Food.