Fourth Star

With the complete cooperation of Chef Daniel Boulud, the author spent a full year at the New York City restaurant, getting to know the staff in the kitchen, the front of the house, and the manager's office. And she reports on it all with a vivid immediacy: the maitre d' shuffling reservations when a VIP shows up unnanounced, the young pastry chef who gets passed over for a promotion (and then gets the last laugh), even the financial arrangements that keep th erestaurant's doors open for business. And the underlying all the drama us Chef Boulud's obsession with getting a fourth star from the New York Times, an honor that the restaurant did, in fact, finally earn.