Prune
Published in 2014, Prune is the cookbook of Gabrielle Hamilton's East Village restaurant of the same name, opened in 1999 and beloved by chefs and writers. Rather than translate the kitchen for home cooks, Hamilton chose to publish the recipes exactly as Prune's line cooks received them, with notations in the margin, terse instructions, and the occasional warning aimed at staff. The book is organized by service rather than by course and reads as both a working document and a portrait of how a small, particular restaurant gets through a day. It became one of the most discussed cookbooks of its decade, prized as much by professional cooks as by home readers willing to meet it on its own terms.
What you might want to know about Prune
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
The cookbook of Gabrielle Hamilton's New York restaurant Prune, reproduced as a working line cook would receive it.
Bourdain championed Gabrielle Hamilton on Twitter and in print, praising Prune as a rare cookbook written from inside the working kitchen rather than for the camera.
Not really. The recipes are written for line cooks and assume real fluency with technique, though many readers enjoy the book as a portrait of a restaurant.
Prune was written by Gabrielle Hamilton, published in 2014 by Random House.
Prune is 448 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Prune takes most readers 7 to 10 hours to finish.
Prune is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.