Category Archives: Food Book Review

Review: Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide, Cecily Wong and Dylan Thuras, Workman Publishing, New York, 2021.

Here’s a geographically-ordered romp through the world’s strangest food customs, dishes and ingredients. Continue reading

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Review: Eating Wild Japan: Tracking the Culture of Foraged Foods, with a Guide to Plants and Recipes, by Winifred Bird, illustrated by Paul Poynter.

Quick! What’s the first thing that springs to mind if I ask you what Japan and the Washington, DC area have in common? (Hint: it’s early Spring here.)  Why, cherry trees in blossom, you’d answer, and you’d be right!  So … Continue reading

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From Noma to Noma, The Long Way Around

Review of Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World, by Jeff Gordinier. For anyone wondering if gonzo journalism died with Tom Wolfe, here is a book for you.  Imagine a Kool-aid acid trip … Continue reading

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It Never Gets Old 3: The Fancy Food Show, 2017 Edition Part 3: Levitation

New this year, the Level Up program presented a selection of exhibits and talks addressing the Future of Food.  It was both literally and figuratively elevated – upstairs from the exhibit floor and filled with blue-sky notions.  I caught a … Continue reading

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Alice, Let’s Write – Review: Coming To My Senses, by Alice Waters

Here is a book written by the mother of the farm-to-table movement in this country, founder of the fount of garden-derived cuisine and high priestess of French-influenced but American-driven  gastronomy.  A reader would expect it to be overflowing with culinary … Continue reading

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Book Review: What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories, by Laura Shapiro

When I start in to read a book that I plan to review, I have a few tools I like to use.  A notepad and pencil, of course, and a set of colored sticky signals, to mark the pages with … Continue reading

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Have Another Taste: The 2015 Summer Fancy Food Show Part 2: A Fabulous Party and Other Events

I should start with the formal opening ceremony, even though I was just slightly late, and had to stand behind the big cameras.  Never mind, it gave me a chance to take a few of my favorite kind of meta-pictures. … Continue reading

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An Austrian’s Adventures in Midcentury America: My Organic Life by Nora Pouillon, with Laura Fraser

If you could sum up Nora Pouillon in one word, would it be “stubborn?” She is known for her single-minded determination to run her professional and personal life the way she sees fit. How about “obsessed?” everything in her restaurant, … Continue reading

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I Eat, Therefore I Speak

Review: The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu, by Dan Jurafsky, Norton, 2014. A book that combines two of my favorite subjects! What could be better? I majored in anthropology in college, where I picked up a smattering … Continue reading

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Librarians Have Appetites!

Why would a food writer attend a librarian’s convention?  Like everyone else, librarians appreciate cooking and eating, and they buy books on those topics for their libraries.  The exhibit hall of the Midwinter Meeting of the American Library Association in … Continue reading

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