Food 2.0: Secrets from the Chef Who Fed Google

By Charlie Ayers

In a cutting edge cookbook for the Internet generation, Google’s legendary founding super-chef, Charlie Ayers, tells you everything you need to know about the newest nutrition buzzword: brainfood. He... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0756633583
• ISBN13: 9780756633585
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: DK Publishing
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 2.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Ayers 2.0 Book

Bought it. Using it. Love it. The pork chops with fig balsamic and blue cheese potatoes are beyond excellent.

Future Food Style

Ayers make the reader to search outside the box on every day eating with proven dishes and direction. eat close to the source, organic if you can but most of all eat something different!Great colorful photos to show you what it should look like when you are done is very helpful and inpirational.

The Google Of Cookbooks

Charlie Ayers has done for food approach what Google did to the interwebs when Sergei and Larry decided to take information already out there and make it more user-friendly. Thus ends the parallels between this cookbook and Google which, through innovative thinking, gave a talented chef a venue to bring fresh, simple food to hungry people. This is a brilliant cookbook, but not necessarily for its recipes. What makes it remarkable is Charlie Ayers' holistic approach to dining: - Buy local when you can because it's the right thing to do (and this is coming from a Conservative with a capital C); - Eat well but mostly plants because it's good for your body (and, as someone continually struggling to lose weight that's a tip I'm taking to heart); - Make your own "fast food" by preparing in advance through "flavor cubes" and freezer storage and both your waistline and bottom line will thank you for it (and haven't we all been at the point where a run to McD's seems easier than making something that's actually good for us?); and - Indulge in the sensations of home-cooked food, from the fun of shopping and preparation to consumption (something which definitely appeals to the foodie in me). We need more chefs who think like this. Thank you, Charlie. This is truly a masterpiece!

Review: Food 2.0: Secrets from the Chef Who Fed Google

For most Americans the cubical is little more than a prison with bi-monthly paychecks and a nice 401K. They are shabby ersatz rooms of false walls covered in nondescript synthetic fabric with little to differentiate one from the other. Any given cubical could belong to a paralegal, claims adjustor, or travel agent. Not so for the folks at Google, the world's number one Web site. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided way back that their company would redefine the office environment for the 21st Century. Google employees enjoy a very loose (i.e. comfortable) dress code, amazing benefits, and they can even bring their pooches to work. Page and Brin are full of outside-the-cubicle thinking. Take lunch for instance. The chief Googlers decided that the common model, half an hour to gorge on processed foods, was bad for productivity. The partially hydrogenated, high-fructose diet of the average American is the root of our societal obesity crisis. Fast-food drive-thrus, all-you-can-eat buffets, and chain restaurants are the leading culprits in this epidemic. Again Google would be different. Page and Brin sought out a chef to custom design the menu at the Google commissary so that workers would not be sluggish. The menu had to be healthy for sure, but it also needed to be more than that, it needed to be empowering. Chef Charlie Ayers's brain food was considered a secret to the early success of Google. And everything that came rolling out of "Charlie's Café" was free to every employee. Those years spent feeding the brains of Google have now manifested themselves into Food 2.0: Secrets from the Chef Who Fed Google. Ayers's innovative concept for food that not only serves the body but fuels the mind begins with what he calls the "Big O." No, not her. "Organics are not the only path to clean, smart food. But the Big O still reigns supreme," he writes. A devotion to organic, locally sourced (150 mile radius) foods was but one of the values employed in the Google kitchens. Chef Charlie also incorporated elements of the raw food craze as well. His philosophy is not a strict raw-food diet, which is a good thing. According to Elizabeth Brown, a dietitian, holistic chef, and sports nutrition specialist who hosts Eat 2 Liv, a purely raw-food diet is not necessarily a healthy diet. She recited a case she recently ran across of a young lady who had contracted candida, a rare thing for a raw foodist. When Brown asked the subject how she developed a condition that usually only stems from overconsumption of processed starches, she informed her that she had recently cleansed her system. "By cleansing she got rid of good bacteria and reduced her defenses," states Brown. "I like that people may be motivated to eat more raw foods but there is no `one way' to eat." Ayers, too, is aware that raw food alone cannot suffice. Another big element of Food 2.0 is the use of fermented foods. He says yogurt, cheese, tea, pickles, and even beer are good for the gast

Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!

Way back in 1999,Google, in its infinite wisdom, decided they didn't want their employees falling asleep halfway through the day because of poor choices at lunchtime. They wanted fresh, energy producing foods to be prepared for their workers and they hired Charlie Ayers, former caterer for The Grateful Dead, to do it. He did that and more, and when he left in 2005, he was serving up meals to 1,500 people a day and overseeing 10 cafés and 150 employees. Now on the verge of opening his own restaurant, Calafia Café and Market a Go Go, in Palo Alto, California, Charlie Ayers has also released a new cookbook, Food 2.0 - Secrets From the Chef Who Fed Google. This book is perfect for a Deadhead, food lovin', organic eatin', Internet junkie like me. I totally relate to everything written and feel much more relaxed about my food choices. I always feel like there's a hard line there between vegetarian and omnivore, organic and non-organic, but Charlie has set down a brand new line somewhere in-between it all that just makes SENSE. He urges everyone to "go organic" without beating us over the head with dos and don'ts. There's just common sense and Charlie's own preference, followed up with the reminder that we all need to do what is right for ourselves. Charlie has a real-life non-nonsense "parent" approach to many things, especially about frozen food - stuff I've been doing for years, but was afraid to share for fear that the hardcore "only from fresh" crowd would shun me. From his feelings on olive oil and his "4 best herbs to grow at home" (the very four I have growing right now) to the section on pasta and his thoughts on why we should eat organic, we are very like-minded. This was almost like reading about myself, except that the recipes are so superior to anything I've created thus far and there were several things I didn't know about food. I can't think of one person who shouldn't own this book. It's 250 pages jam-packed with all you really need to know about feeding yourself and your family very well.