Capture A Fork In The Road Scripted By Lonely Planet Conveyed As Electronic Format
very enjoyable collection of short pieces relating to food,
It's a rich and diverse collection with most of the stories hitting the right notes, Those that deal with interesting places, time periods or really exploring one particular food are the highlights and there are too many to metion, A couple fall into the trap of just listing the things eaten, particularly the ones on American BBQ and an Aussie chef in Paris, but they are rare missteps in an otherwise excellent collection.
A nice mix
of upandcoming and wellestablished authors,many of them contributing writers for "Saveur," are included in this anthology, I intended to use this as inspiration for my own writing yet I found myself putting this down after onlyof the stories,
Perhaps I prefer my bitesized food reading in monthly magazine format, I love my food porn seasoned with tidbits of information, Curtis Stone ran the bulls in Pamplona! Carla Hall was a model in Paris! Gael Greene writes erotic fiction! And most astonishingly of all, James Oseland was a punk in thes!! I read essays that made me hungry and essays that made me squeamish.
I wish to be an adventurous eater, but I draw the line at blood soup and maggot cheese, Beautiful compilation of stories from individuals passionate about food and travel, Highly recommend especially the stories with Adam and Eve Diner, the barbecue hunt across the state of Georgia, the story about the kitschy new step mum and the pinkpurple squid sambal, Michael Pollan's take on Kim chi, and Marcus Samuelsson's quest for fugu and overall epiphany about Japanese cuisine.
I have never really thought about reading a book about food, Don't get me wrong, I love food I love eating it, I love cooking it, I love trying new foods and when I travel I do try to find and sample as many of the local specialities as I can.
However, it has never crossed my mind that reading about food other than a recipe book was a thing, But, when I subscribed to Kobo for the year and got a free ebook from a choice of terrible looking titles, only one book stood out, purely for the "Lonely Planet" bit at the top.
I love travelling as much as I love food, and Lonely Planet guides have helped me navigate and find interesting new places all around the world, so I trust them, so I chose this book.
Most of the stories are interesting enough, a few are very good, many of them left my stomach rumbling and my mouth watering and, sadly, a few made me fall asleep.
If there were fewer of these ones I would have given the book a higher rating!
Despite the bad stories though, this book actually did change the way I travel, and the way I think about the food I eat whilst I travel.
As I mentioned before, I do always like to sample different foods from around the world, and reading these anecdotes it made me realise that many of my best experiences I have had when travelling, either in exotic countries or around the UK, have involved food! From meals cooked over open fires in little huts in China's southern jungles, to my first taste of freshly caught fish which me and my sisters and friends gleefully gutted when on a childhood holiday in Devon, a lot of great memories revolve around food.
The fact I was reading this whilst travelling in Cambodia and Vietnam also made me want to try as much food as I could, which is part of the reason I felt inclined to try and I don't recommend it giant cockroach in Phnom Penh, sour palm wine at the side of the road in Ankor Watt, Vietnamese street food which tasted delicious and brought me much closer to the porcelain in my hotels and hostels I stayed in and many other culinary delights from around that part of South East Asia.
I am very glad I read this book, it has added another dimension to my experiences of both travel and food! This collection of short stories has the perfect combination of food and travel experiences.
The wildly varying writing styles are all faithful to communicating the meaning and joy that food brings to our lives, and how it etches itself into our memories.
I wasn't familiar with all the authors names, but have discovered some that I am going to pursue further now, Essays about food AND travel Sign me up! As with any essay collection, it's a bit hit or miss, but the hits are a delight and even the misses aren't terrible.
Jane and Michael Stern's essay about the nudie truck stop is definitely among the hits, Many of the contributors' names were familiar to me Curtis Stone, Madhur Jaffrey, Frances Mayes, Martin Yan, Michael Pollan, and Carla Hall just to name a few, But some were not Giles Coren, Annabel Langbein, and Ma Thanegi, for example and I was grateful for the brief bio of each contributor at the beginning of the piece.
Most of the contributors' pieces details their discovery of food, Good food. Or they might discuss how they embarked on their culinary trajectory, In any case, this book is filled with lifealtering food experiences,
In Curtis Stone's "An Italian Education," I found myself missing Italy tremendously, He writes, "It makes perfect sense that the slowfood movement began in Italy, That relaxed, leisurely philosophy to cooking permeated everything they did, Except perhaps driving. " He credits his time in Franciavilla, Calabria with teaching him everything about why he wanted to cook,
Francine Prose had me longing for cassoulet after reading her "We'll Have the Cassoulet, " She shares, "Every bean was a masterpiece, The chunks of sausage were sublime, I thought I'd known something about duck confit, but until now I'd known nothing, I'd been a cassoulet virgin, "
Joe Dunthorne wrote about sanguinaccio in Sardinia, Fuchsia Dunlop chased the tail of Chiuchow cooking, And Alan Richman, in "Omar Sharif Slept Here," lamented Cairo cuisine, "I can't understand how a people whose civilization predates all others couldn't come up with tastier food," he writes,
It's impossible to pick a favorite piece because they were all so fantastic, Seriously. If you have any inclination towards food writing, this is a must read, It's a great book. Really. The short stories are intriguing and draw you in, It almost creates a green eyed monster within you, However, I have a hard time focuses on multiple stories, Some were almost too short, not giving you enough time to get into them, Be sure to have a snack when you read this you surely will be hungry! This is a book of short essays about food, specifically food that is connected to a travel experience or strong sense of place for each author.
Most of the authors are food writers or chefs, I love travel, and I love food, so it seemed like the perfect book for me! I did enjoy it, some stories more than others, and it was fun to reflect on my own experiences with food growing up and during my travels as an adult.
It took me a while to get through it, but that might just be because I read it during a busy time, and short stories dont tend to draw me in as much as other formats do.
Fun anthology of food and travel stories, You will know a lot of the authors from tv and foodie "royalty", It was interesting to get so many different perspectives on food experiences that stood out to the different writers, It was interesting to read their unique stories, I also appreciated that these experiences occurred all over the world, None of the stories really stood out and seemed that great to me, but none of them were poorly written, either, While reading this book I was reminded of ordering whole grilled sardines in Portugal, They were served whole: eyes, scales, guts, and all, I wondered if I had the guts to eat this small school staring up at me from my plate, I did. I paid for it later, This was a reminder of what I already knew: my stomach is not as adventurous as I am,
Theseessays by various food/travel writers about food span the globe and range of experience, Some are merely anecdotal some are reflective and show the transformative power of both travel and food in all parts of the world, If you're homebound and need to get away for a bit, this selection is the ticket, .