Lessons in Excellence from Charlie Trotter

Author: Paul Clarke, Charlie Trotter, Geoffrey Smart
List Price: $19.95
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ISBN: 0898159083
Publisher: Ten Speed Press (September, 1999)
Sales Rank: 40,419
Average Customer Rating: 3.57 out of 5

Customer Reviews

Rating: 4 out of 5
culinary excellence
Charlie Trotter, what a great chef and entrepreneur. This book is for the People who want one day to own a buisness. Reading this book gives you the aspects of running a restaurant and being the best. Having passion for this line of work, he cant stress more. Without passion for food or being sucsessful it will not work. Charlie Trotter gives great lessons in excellence, from hiring anf firing, to running a kitchen without rasing a voice

Rating: 4 out of 5
If Excellence is your Goal, there are lessons for you
This is both an interesting and boring work, due to the insights shared from Charlie Trotter's success. The boring stuff is the repitition of common-sense advice which everyone knows but few implement habitually. This is what separates the mediocre from the excellent.

Trotter maintains an atomosphere of excellence, from his hiring practices to discipline to innovation to publicity, etc.

One can certainly take much from this work to ponder about possible adaptation for one's own enterprise.

Rating: 2 out of 5
Better if "as told to" rather than "as interpreted by"
As a big fan of Trotter and his innovation and creativity, I was excited to read this book. Unfortunately, it's just not very good. Mr. Clarke uses a notion or two per chapter that Trotter has applied as a successful entrepeneur, then boils it down, oversimplifies it, and creates tedious little pop quizzes of the "rate yourself" variety. It's as if he doesn't know whether he's writing a do-it-yourself workbook or a study of business. Clarke's very intrusive and heavy-handed, and this blunts the force of the good observations he does make. All in all, Clarke's interpretations of Trotter's wisdom lack the ring of authenticity of someone who's actually done what he espouses. This would be a lot better if it was actually Trotter doing the teaching.

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