Kinkead's Cookbook: Recipes from Washington D.C.'s Premier Seafood Restaurant

By Bob Kinkead

Book Overview

Since opening in 1993, Kinkead's has become synonymous with fresh seafood, generous portions, and quality dining, making it one of Washington D.C.'s most acclaimed restaurants. Situated in the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1580085229
• ISBN13: 9781580085229
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 2.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 9.1" x 10.9"

Customer Reviews

A+ Among Books from Famous Restaurants. Buy It.

`Kinkead's Cookbook' by executive chef / owner Bob Kinkead is a restaurant cookbook which succeeds in giving us something genuinely new, or at least new to my world of knowledge about food. This places it high in the ranks of restaurant cookbooks I have reviewed over the last year. This is not a really big surprise, as Kinkead and his restaurant get lots of exposure on the Food Network as a `best of' place to eat in Washington, DC and with coverage of sous chef Tracy O'Grady's efforts at the Bocuse D'Or competition a few years back. From what I have seen of Kinkead before opening this book is that he is a talented, no nonsense chef with a real concern for the success of independent restaurants throughout the country, not just his own establishments. The main contribution of this book to the amateur's understanding of seafood is the fact that the average consumer simply cannot routinely purchase the same quality of fish as are routinely bought by leading restaurants. This is simply a matter of who gives the suppliers their best business. A DC housewife may spend $50 a week at her local fishmonger. Kinkead's will spend $50,000 in that same week, with deliveries being inspected by experts in picking out fish. The housewife will buy things that may have been on ice for two to four weeks from the time the fish was caught. The restaurant has a good chance of obtaining fish that was caught about a week ago. All this makes me wonder why no one has brought this up before. It seems a lot of talk about fish buying, including the trips by such luminaries as Wolfgang Puck and Masaharu Morimoto to the docks to inspect fish are largely photo ops. These senior chefs simply do not do this on a regular basis. Aside from the straight scoop on fish buying realities, Kinkead gives all the usual advice, in a bit greater depth than most sources, on evaluating the freshness of fish at the market. His primary contribution to our practical approach to fish is to buy it whole and butcher the little beauties ourselves. Another of Kinkead's major contributions to our insights about high end restaurants is the fact that dozens of things contribute to the success or failure of a new restaurant, many having no connection with the quality of the food. He reels these off without giving a whole lot of advice on how to control them, but he does use these to make the pitch for supporting independent restaurants instead of going to large chain restaurants. The former is about good food. The latter is about money. Kinkead also gives a brief exposition on what makes a good cook. This information is not terribly new, as it identifies Taste, Mastery of Fire, Knowledge of Chemistry, and skills with Tools, especially knives as the cornerstones of good chef skills. The most notable item on this list is that Kinkead is endorsing scientific understanding as a contribution to good cooking, not just thorough practical knowledge of how food behaves. As far as how Kinkead expects us to approa