THERE are many writers who love food and its attendant actions—eating, drinking, and cooking. Conversely, there are cooks and gourmands with the talent for writing about their passions, so that the genre of food writing has developed over centuries, ever since the first cookbook was written around the first century CE— De Re Coquinaria (On the Subject of Cooking).
It’s interesting when authors whose works are primarily in other genres write about the food that inspired or disgusted them; it gives us a peek into their private lives.
Perhaps that’s also what New York Times columnist Amanda Hesser thought when she compiled 26 food-related recollections of some of the most well-known American writers. “Food,” she says in her introduction, “is the royal road to the unconscious…” The succinct way for a writer to portray a person, she adds, is to describe the way they eat.
There are memories, says Hesser, that are “accompanied by a taste” —filet mignon at a restaurant with her father, toast in her parents’ kitchen, sweet plums and peppermint tea at the births of her children. “Each of these ordinary tastes, when amplified by powerful feelings, becomes a sensual beacon that illuminates a whole swath of my life.”
The writers whose works are in this volume interpreted the theme in their own fashion, thus not all the stories go into detail about food or cooking, but almost all of them end with a relevant recipe.
In “Paris Match,” Ann Patchett recounts a fight she and her lover Karl had in Taillevent, but forgets what she ate. As a reader, I was frustrated—you were at Taillevent, a legendary Michelin-star restaurant, for heaven’s sake! —but she confesses, “The bill—I do remember that much—was $350…It was the best meal either one of us had ever had in our lives, and we missed it.” Ah, but we all know about love and its attendant dramas, so we forgive Patchett and move on to someone who was paying more attention to their meal.
Chef Dan Barber tells, in “The Great Carrot Caper,” an amusing story of how he once tried to grow almond-flavor-infused carrots (long story) but failed. To appease customers who had come in to his restaurant to try the new vegetable, he faked it with almond oil. He was declared a genius and he sold 66 almond carrot salads that night.
At first I was irked by Billy Collins’ poem “The Fish” —it was like cheating because it was a short poem, not an essay—but the verses drew me in for their truthful view of a situation that’s all too familiar. “As soon as the elderly waiter / placed before me the fish I had ordered. / it began to stare up at me / with its one flat, iridescent eye. / I feel sorry for you, it seemed to say / eating alone in this awful restaurant / bathed in such unkindly light / and surrounded by these dreadful murals of Sicily…” It sounds absolutely like that pasta place we’ve all been to.
George Saunders weighs in with “The Absolutely No-Anything Diet” where, in his typical dark and speculative tone, he talks of eating nothing but air—to save the planet, to lose weight, to gain the moral high ground. The accompanying recipe is just as surreal.
Gary Shteyngart’s “The Sixth Sense” is an ode to garlic, spices, and food with zing and character; Colson Whitehead tells in “I Scream” how he loved ice cream—until he worked in an ice cream store; Yiyun Li describes the time when Tang powdered juice was a fad in Beijing.
And so they go, story after story of how some foods and tastes trigger memories of childhoods happy or sad, lovers lost or gained, homes in Berlin, Nara, Delhi.
As with most anthologies, it is uneven in the sense that the reader might not get what they expected. It would also be more entertaining (and money-for-value) if it were longer; as it is, it’s too short— “bitin”—and that’s never a good thing, whether in food or books.
I’d like to see a similar anthology put together here. A couple of years, ago, novelist Krip Yuson sent out a call for manuscripts and recipes for such a book. I hope a publisher shows interest so that this project gets off the backburner. Imagine food stories and recipes from the likes of Yuson, Butch Dalisay, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, F. Sionil Jose, and other literary luminaries—that would be a treat!
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