Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line
By: Michael Gibney / Narrated By: Fred Berman
Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
5 1/2+-hrs. of MEH, and Good GOSH, noooooo!!!
Here’s the deal: Once Upon A Time I was a Foodie and Cook Extraordinaire, watching cooking shows, devouring (Okay, not sure if the pun was intended, or not…) cook books, striving to make the perfect sauce reduction. So even tho’ I LOATHE cooking nowadays (What? It can’t be nuked? Then ‘tain’t happening!), I’m exceeeedingly fond of chef-ish types o’ audiobooks…
At work, overnights, I used to watch all those cooking competitions wherein cooks/chefs have to scramble, deal with nail-biting time constraints, kowtow to Chefs with that ol’ capital C. LOVE those.
And so, what could be better than a Tell-All tale just in time for Thanksgiving, one written in 2nd person that’d put the listener smack-dab in the middle of fraught happenings, where the “you” would add a sense of urgency?
The answer? Oh good golly gosh and Jiminy H. Freaking Cricket, ANYTHING would’ve been better than this, Sous Chef wherein basically shit just happens, cigarettes are smoked, like, AAAAALLL the freaking time. Where, yes, the executive chef is GOD, but our “Hero” author Michael Gibney is one inCREDibly juvenile wretch who posits himself as the aforementioned Hero.
Get ready for puerile shenanigans, heavy partying, exhaustion, lack of sleep which somehow does NOT affect one’s ability to party. You know: the usual. I’ve listened to far better than this, far more engaging, with far better food descriptions. Indeed, this is all infantile behavior, and I dozed off several times. Written in second person, it obviously did NOT put me in the middle of the action, it only made me feel like a callow idiot with bad choice-making skills.
Fred Berman capably narrates this, managing the stereotypical Hispanic co-workers with great aplomb, not eye-roll-inducing at all. And he totally makes Gibney come off like the cigarette-sucking dweeb he is. Uhm, Bravo?
The funny part of all of this is that Big Sis and I were s’posed to listen to this for discussion, but I dorked out, didn’t glance at my Listening to Now offerings, and I listened to Savor instead. It was with much embarrassment, sheepishness, that I was set straight. Cuz you see, Savor was an AWEsome Listen, perfect for Thanksgiving. Sous Chef? Not so much, and I’m glad I didn’t listen to it until Thanksgiving was over.
Anything to be vaaaastly grateful for?
Why, that m’ Thanksgiving wasn’t marred by the childish idiocy this was. Nary a kindness to be found in this, the people were dreadful, and the last 45+ minutes was culinary terms, not recipes. I kinda liked that, but NOT so freaking many minutes of it, and jeez, when an audiobook is of this length, that comes to less than 5-hours of action.
Which is a GODsend when things are on the Suckwad-side…!
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