Burn The Place-Iliana Regan

Burn The Place happens to be a cookie-cutter example of what I would call a happy accident.

This book was not on my radar whatsoever when I began 2024. Once I finished Introducing NLP, I had planned on jumping right into The Stand, and still have yet to crack a page of that book.

Man plans, God laughs.

That's life.

Anyway, before reading this book, I had never heard of Iliana Regan. And that's not meant to be a slight on her name or a knock on her lack of notoriety. It's just that she is a well-accomplished chef with a shitload of clout in the culinary industry and my knowledge of chef powerhouses beyond Anthony Bourdain, Michael Simon, and that crazy Ramsey guy from Hells Kitchen, is whittled down to whoever is judging on Chopped and the few contestants that seem intriguing enough to merit a follow on Instagram.

I just happened to stumble upon Burn The Place when I was digging for books to flip for a profit on Pango in the basement of my local library. When I scanned the barcode on ScoutIQ, it was a reject. But the numbers were high enough on Amazon to take a gamble.

When I was listing Iliana's novel for sale and taking pictures of the condition of the pages, I opened it to Chapter 9: Tequila. Interesting, I thought. I read the first line: "Tequila makes me go to jail. I tell people this and they laugh. But it's true."

Ok.

Let's see what's up.

I sat down and finished the chapter. It was a fun read. Even out of context with the absent foreknowledge of any of the characters or the road that led to her waking up in a jail cell with crusty cocaine rings around her nostrils and vomit on her sweater.

That's only the meat of the book though. It turned out that there was a lot more to this woman's story than that of a ballistic party animal that knew how to make a decent meal.

Once I finished with another book that I was in the middle of, I picked up Iliana's story from the beginning and finished reading it in about three to four days (I didn't keep count). It was a rather fascinating account that kept me fixated on the life story of a stranger with as many peaks and valleys as my own.

I found her prose succinct, raw, and very enjoyable. Her poetic enthusiasm for her childhood and the elements of family, food, and the farmhouse she grew up in were drenched with passion and I found all of it completely relatable. As, much like Iliana, I too had parents that became divorced when I was in my mid-teens and this was after we had to sell the house that I think everyone in my family loved more than anything. 

*So endeared do I hold 26973 First Street to my heart that I have the address tattooed across the top of my back.*

When Iliana waxed nostalgic about her Indiana hometown, the farmhouse, the country roads, and her grandfather's farm, it made me harken back to all of the playgrounds of my past that have now transferred into the hands of other people to etch their memories upon and I had to put the book down several times as I Google walked addresses of my youth that I consider to be sacred ground.

Perhaps this is merely a habit one inevitably endeavors in when we get to the age that I and Iliana are at (she was born in '79, I was born in '84) where strolls down memory lane remind us of how quickly this thing called life can seem to pass. To build upon this very sentiment, I remember, when employed at the casino in downtown Cleveland, instead of keeping an eye on the degenerates who were losing their children's trust fund, I would spend most of the time in High Limit on the computer looking up former addresses on Zillow of family, friends, and relatives. Scrolling through the pictures of flipped houses that had newly reconfigured rooms that seemingly erased the ghosts of their past with Valspar and screened-in patios. When I Google walk down Heritage Court in Fort Mill, South Carolina, and look down the slanted driveway of my grandparent's former home—the mecca of my mother's side of the family—where others see only concrete overlooking a small hill…I can practically see the pick-up game of basketball I played with my cousins Chris and Kyle. I can see the water balloon fights. The Easter Egg hunts. Uncles, Aunts, and Cousins all coming and going. Golden memories of only which I and a few fortunate blood relatives are privy to.

Going off on a recollective tailspin (such as the last paragraph) is much what a lot of this book reads like. It wasn't until after I had finished the book that I was able to put any images to the faces of Iliana's parents, her sisters, wife, or other friends. But as I read along I felt like I knew them already.

Like Iliana, I had also entered into the service industry as an adult. However, this is where the similarities of our paths become severed. Iliana was bred into working with food. It was in her blood. And such was her passion that working elsewhere outside of a kitchen or restaurant would've been a severe disservice to herself. It was where she was meant to be for the rest of her life: within the orbit of food.

Me, I only went into the gaming industry because I liked to play Texas Hold Em and thought it would make for a cool job as a dealer. Then became extremely disillusioned and left the industry after 13 years because I was growing to hate everyone.

Including myself.

Iliana had no such issues. It was only self-destruction that inhibited her path to success and she overcame those odds (along with many others) to become the successful chef/proprietor that she is today.

Off the rip, you could tell that she has an innate sense of food and skills that simply cannot be taught. When you combine the tutelage of old school family members that love to cook, along with natural curiosity and imagination, and combine that with undeniable passion, determination, and grit, then….well…shit…. you don't need any other ingredients. Sky's the only limit to your success.

And I mean that.

I loved when she talked about the arduous measures she took to create the perfect doughnut. Or, when people laughed at her idea, how she turned her mother's apartment into an underground restaurant. And how she dealt with chauvinistic know-it-all hot dogs that refused to take orders from a woman whose skillset was way out of their league.

Persevering despite these things while overcoming alcoholism is inspiring, to say the least.

It was exceptionally refreshing to hear of the headaches that she had to deal with inside the restaurant industry as well.  I may not have had the same trials as Iliana's, but mine were definitely in the same ballpark.

I don't consider myself a mean person, but my patience was persistently worn thin by co-workers—both by dealers and upper management alike—daily.

For instance: One time when I was in High Limit and it was getting close to the end of sunrise (my shift), the day shift manager, Jim Climitt, walked in and I gave him the run down so that he could be cognizant of where things stood for the days hold (what the casino is winning and losing). Just as I had approved one dealer to bring in a gargantuan amount of color from a player to exchange for a larger denomination, simultaneously, a red light goes off (signifying a malfunction) on the shuffle machine at a table where I had just issued a $50,000 marker to a different—well-known and respected—player.

"Fuck," I muttered. "Ummm, you want to grab the red light and I'll color this guy up? Or vice versa. Doesn't matter to me."

He smiled, then replied: "You can get them both."

This was my "leader", and he walked out of the room, leaving me behind, buried under the avalanche of issues.

Teamwork makes the dream work, right? At least at any other property it did, but not Cleveland.  To this day, if someone had given me a tire iron and complete immunity for my crime of battery, I think I'd be willing to spend a few thousand years in purgatory confinement.

And that's not to hijack Iliana's story and make it my own. On the contrary, it is only mentioned in a commiserate light, as a relatable conduit, to show how compassionate I am to her plight of enduring the sewage-laden backstages of high-end restaurants. Where co-workers and underlings don't listen, think they know everything, don't do what they're told, or flat out just don't give a shit about the job they are paid to do. When you hold your work in high regard, it is unacceptable that others don't do likewise.

I get it.

If ever there was a human manifestation of Dagny Taggart, I would have to consider Iliana Regan to be it.

I enjoyed this book a lot.

If you're a picky reader, it can be a bit listy at times. But it didn't bother me. And if you made it through my speed freak prose review to this point, by comparison, Iliana's writing will seem like Shakespeare.

Grade: A

Verdict: Read