The Gastronomica Reader

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About The Gastronomica Reader

Product Description Described in the 2008 Saveur 100 as “At the top of our bedside reading pile since its inception in 2001,” the award-winning Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture is a quarterly feast of truly exceptional writing on food. Designed both to entertain and to provoke, The Gastronomica Reader now offers a sumptuous sampling from the journal’s pages―including essays, poetry, interviews, memoirs, and an outstanding selection of the artwork that has made Gastronomica so distinctive. In words and images, it takes us around the globe, through time, and into a dazzling array of cultures, investigating topics from early hominid cooking to Third Reich caterers to the Shiite clergy under Ayatollah Khomeini who deemed Iranian caviar fit for consumption under Islamic law. Informed throughout by a keen sense of the pleasures of eating, tasting, and sharing food, The Gastronomica Reader will inspire readers to think seriously, widely, and deeply about what goes onto their plates. Gastronomica is a winner of the Utne Reader's Independent Press Award for Social/Cultural Coverage From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. This collection of articles from Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture will feed the curious and the jaded with an eclectic collection of food-related stories, photos and poems that range from the avant-garde to the mildly outrageous to the titillating and the occasionally ridiculous. This multifaceted presentation, graced with provocative illustrations, includes a profile of a famous restaurateur who became Hitler's caterer, an examination of taboos related to cooking apes, the chronicle of a foodie's colonoscopy, a surprisingly engaging essay regarding "The Legacy of Iceland's Herring Oil and Meal Factories," and an investigation of food pornography (a stretch even for the open-minded); poems include odes to a sexy shallot and a talking potato. More conventional articles consider the traditional New York City egg cream ("Somehow the lack of those two ingredients never bothered customers"), drinking cappuccino along the Spice Trail, and television cooking shows ("the illegitimate love child, or even the prostitute, of the real world of gastronomy"). Putting the "soup to nuts" principal to good use, this volume should absorb anyone with an appetite for unconventional food writing. 64 color and b/w illustrations. Review “A volume to browse and absorb.” ― New York Times Published On: 2010-03-10 “This volume should absorb anyone with an appetite for unconventional food writing.” STARRED REVIEW ― Publishers Weekly Published On: 2010-02-22 “It is easy to get quickly drawn in and once you do, it is difficult to put this book down.” -- Andrea Rappaport ― San Francisco Book Review Published On: 2010-05-26 “Delights in manners ranging from the poetic to the political.” ― Bookforum Published On: 2010-03-01 “The gloriously illustrated Gastronomica reader is a every bit as good as it looks.” ― Times Literary Supplement (TLS) Published On: 2010-09-17 From the Inside Flap “Rarefied but unpretentious, each issue is an artfully curated collection of essays, poems, art, and journalistic reportage. . . . Gastronomica's fare never fails to nourish us.” — Saveur magazine “I am so impressed with this journal. It indicates an accuracy and diversity of information and style that will inspire and encourage people to pay attention to what they are eating.”—Alice Waters “Food, even more than sex, is the basis for human relationships, and if Brillat-Savarin's 'Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are' is right, Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture will enhance your life and improve your relationships with your family and your friends.”—Jacques Pépin “Gastronomica deserves the food world's attention.” —Paul Levy “A food journal of high standards that takes on substantive food issues.”—Patricia Unterman “Interacting with so many disciplines, Gastronomica will assure a fine intellec