More like 2 and 1/2. Kitchen Confidential this is not. It's a well done memoir of one of the few woman to have worked as captain, something like head waiter at one of the four stars New York restaurants. The style is average almost pedestrian. The reader doesn't get involved in the inner working of the front staff or in the writer love life. Everything is a bit beige except the writer's love of food. That is what saved it for me. If the writer had put as much passion into the rest of the book it would have been a success in my book. For readers who don't cook and buy cook books for the pictures.