In Butcher + Beast, chef Angie Mar shares the recipe behind her success: great food, hustling hard and playing the game

This is not a book for vegetarians or the squeamish. It’s not just that the recipes are meat-focused, but that there are pictures of dead animals and organ meat – as well as a bowl of blood (there can’t be boudin noir without blood).

The author of Butcher + Beast (2019), Chinese-American Angie Mar, is chef and owner of the critically acclaimed Beatrice Inn, in New York, which started life as a speakeasy during the Prohibition era. More recently, it was owned by Graydon Carter, a former editor of Vanity Fair and co-founder of Spy magazine. Carter, however, had better luck with his magazines than with the restaurant, which received a zero-star review in The New York Times in 2013.

Mar, who took over as chef at the Bea (as she calls it) after that review, bought the restaurant from Carter in 2016, and soon after, The New York Times re-reviewed the place, giving it a two-star rating.

In the book, Mar writes, “Once upon a time, all you had to do was cook good food. Build it and people will come, they said. But now, to be successful in the restaurant industry, you have to do three things, and do them well. Having insanely good food is part of it, but only a small part of it. You also have to hustle hard, and you have to play the game.

“The hustle is the easy part. Go, go, go – you can sleep when you’re dead. Until then, coffee, military naps and a plethora of energy drinks will keep you going […] I’m constantly working the floor at the Bea, shaking hands and kissing babies, even though it’s not in my nature […] I am both a mother and a therapist to my four dozen employees, and I carry the weight of knowing that how hard I hustle directly affects getting a**es into seats every single night so my staff can pay their rent and I can pay mine.