Chefs are now considered artists but among the stars of that profession, Peter Hoffman is a true aesthete. In What’s Good?: A Memoir in Fourteen Ingredients, he’s also a philosopher-activist, weighing the environmental implications of the food he serves and trying to run an egalitarian restaurant before realizing that hierarchy is necessary. As owner of New York’s Savoy and Back Forty, he also had to figure out the economics. After a while, the cost of serving good food in a relatively small space became a juggling act with too many balls in the air—with an increasing number hitting the floor.
It’s a memoir that begins in a unique childhood of secular Jews with a strong sense of German roots in a suburb that was a only a short ride to New York, a city with the widest array of restaurants, groceries and outdoor markets. His countercultural inclinations left a mark—be “part of the solution” as Eldridge Cleaver demanded, and “be here now” as Ram Dass counseled.
Hoffman’s awareness of food, the taste and the sources (as well as the sauces) began early, and by the time he came of age in the late ‘70s, the profile of chefs was on the rise. Always uncomfortable in the role of “cooking rich food for rich people in restaurants that flaunted their high prices,” he broke with trendy nouvelle cuisine and established a restaurant that was eclectic, Mediterranean-inspired yet American. Savoy served as a community hub in rundown Soho, coming alive with galleries and studios in the ‘80s. By the time he closed his restaurant, revamped as Back Forty, in 2015, the neighborhood had lost its edge, the rent rose sky high and he was reduced to selling fancy hamburgers to the tourists who overran the district.
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What’s Good is a kitchen door view of the boutique restaurant business, but also a New York story and a narrative worth reading for its evocative prose and wise insights on food and life. And yes, the “Fourteen Ingredients” allude to favorite recipes that conclude many of the chapters.
