After finishing college, Lauren Shockey surprised her parents by going to culinary school. She decides that she will round out her cooking education by completing stages (kitchen internships) at four different restaurants with very different viewpoints. She begins her journey at Wylie Dufresne’s wd-50 in New York then travels to Vietnam to work at La Verticale. From Vietnam, Shockey then travels to Tel Aviv to work in Carmella Bistro. Finally, she ends her journey in Paris at Senderens. Shockey describes her time at wd-50 in great detail but her vastly different experience in Hanoi focuses little on the kitchen aspect and more on the local cuisine while Tel Aviv’s central focus becomes more about Shockey’s friends and personal exchanges. In Paris, the focus once again becomes the kitchen, but the transitions all lead up to Shockey’s conclusions at the end of her journey: enjoying food and cooking for others is not necessarily all it takes to make it in a restaurant career. It’s an expensive lesson to learn, but at least she has the kitchen skills to really impress her friends and loved ones! Four Kitchens is entertaining, but is missing a little of the wow factor other food memoirs out there offer. I did find Shockey to be very honest and insightful throughout the book, though.