Recorded June 21, 2006 at the New York Public Library.

Join Bill Buford, author of the kitchen memoir Heat, as he plunges into the life of Mario Batali and his rise to extraculinary fame, along with Anthony Bourdain, executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles, as they discuss the dao, the worldview and work ethic of the professional. Fear not: you will learn once and for all how to sauce pasta properly, what's good about shanks and hooves as Buford & Batali & Bourdain regale us with many kitchen secrets.

For three frenetic years of trials and errors, disappointments and triumphs, author and New Yorker writer, Bill Buford was kitchen slave to chef Mario Batali at his three-star NYC restaurant, Babbo. As Buford worked his way up the Babbo ladder from kitchen bitch to line cook, his relationship with the larger-than-life Batali grew while he learned his life story through kitchen encounters and after-work all-nighters. Buford's immersion into the art of butchery in Northern Italy, preparing game in London, and making handmade pasta at an Italian hillside trattoria, become an illuminating exploration of why food matters.