Ingredients: It is the early Sixties. Down the side of a dilapidated synagogue in North-west London, a great partnership is born. Apart, Mal Jones and Solly Princeton are two teenage no-hopers scrabbling about in the dirt. Together they are dynamite: a world-beating team who turn a company selling chicken-soup machines to the Jewish mothers of Edgware into an international hotel and leisure empire. But success is never simple. Before long pressures draw them away from the comforts of their roots. They find themselves cutting corners, taking risks and breaking the law. Finally Mal has to confront his life, his friendship with Solly and where their very different ambitions have led them. Thirty-five years later as sunset ushers in the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, Mal, his fortune gone, picks over the ruins of his past with his niece, Natasha. He tells her the story of the Sinai Corporation, of his best friend and business partner, Solly, and at last begins to ask himself: how far must you go before you lose faith in yourself?

An astronomical gastronomical undertaking —one of the world’s preeminent restaurant critics takes on the giants of haute cuisine, one tasting menu at a time Like the luxury fashion companies Gucci and Chanel, high-end dining has gone global, and Jay Rayner has watched, amazed, as the great names of the restaurant business have turned themselves from artisans into international brands. Long suspecting that his job was too good to be true, Rayner uses his entrée into this world to probe the larger issues behind the globalization of dinner. Combining memoir with vivid scenes at the table; interviews with the world’s most renowned chefs, restaurateurs, and eaters; and a few well-placed rants and raves about life as a paid gourmand, Rayner puts his thoughtful, innovative, and hilarious stamp on food writing. He reports on high-end gastronomy from Vegas to Dubai, Moscow to Tokyo, London to New York, ending in Paris where he attempts to do with Michelin-starred restaurants what Morgan Spurlock did with McDonald’s in Super Size Me —eating at those establishments on consecutive days and never refusing a sixteen-course tasting menu when it’s offered. The Man Who Ate the World is a fascinating and riotous look at the business and pleasure of fine dining.