Delicious take on food and taste
By Christine Muhlke |
December 2, 2011, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
THE three subjects in its subtitle are sure to propel Adam Gopnik's new essay collection, "The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food" stockingward. But a word of advice to those seeking a book of heartwarming tales and wry culinary observations in the vein of Gopnik's popular 2000 collection, "From Paris to the Moon" - babies and baguettes it is not. This is Gopnik as gastronomist.
While the book's title is a slam dunk, it's the work of a shrewd marketing department rather than a reflection of the rather serious text, a stew of delightful New Yorker profiles and essays thickened with harder-to-digest explorations of everything from how the West Indies sugar plantation gave rise to the pastry chef to the historical interplay of the cafe and the restaurant. Gopnik's family? They get the occasional cameo. France? It has a plum role (even if French cuisine is in crisis, the subject of a delicious essay). But the main thrust is a pseudo-academic investigation of the meaning of food and its gamier, less definable sibling, taste.
What do we talk about when we talk about food? It's an important question, since we talk about food all the time. But today's critics, recipe-memoirists and television chefs are often too busy recounting meals or engaging in competitive cooking to poke at the larger meaning. "Having made food a more fashionable object," Gopnik writes, "we have ended by making eating a smaller subject." Packaging essays into sections on the table, he makes quite a meal of it.
Gopnik lightens his deep research and knowledge with personal anecdotes. If he's writing about, say, the localism trend, he's not just reading every book on the subject, he's also trekking to the Bronx to find a live chicken for dinner. He recalls a childhood meal at Howard Johnson's before bursting the myth that the French Revolution gave rise to the restaurant. (Based on his reading of "a clutch of scholars, many of them, interestingly, women," it dates at least 20 years prior. Interesting indeed.) If he's following the crumbs of dessert back to pre-Crusades diets, it's because he stopped eating sweets to avoid middle-aged spread.
The information is impressive, but Gopnik's elegant prose is occasionally pocked with thudding pomposity.
He also presents theories on the moral value of taste, then ties them up with a bow: "We are what we eat? Probably closer to the truth to say that we eat what we are: The total self we bring to the table shapes the way we choose, and even how we chew. Our morals and our manners together drive our molars."
Bravo to Gopnik for tackling the true meaning behind a trend. Let's hope those unsuspecting readers seeking a vicarious feast will be charmed by the notion of thinking before they eat.
While the book's title is a slam dunk, it's the work of a shrewd marketing department rather than a reflection of the rather serious text, a stew of delightful New Yorker profiles and essays thickened with harder-to-digest explorations of everything from how the West Indies sugar plantation gave rise to the pastry chef to the historical interplay of the cafe and the restaurant. Gopnik's family? They get the occasional cameo. France? It has a plum role (even if French cuisine is in crisis, the subject of a delicious essay). But the main thrust is a pseudo-academic investigation of the meaning of food and its gamier, less definable sibling, taste.
What do we talk about when we talk about food? It's an important question, since we talk about food all the time. But today's critics, recipe-memoirists and television chefs are often too busy recounting meals or engaging in competitive cooking to poke at the larger meaning. "Having made food a more fashionable object," Gopnik writes, "we have ended by making eating a smaller subject." Packaging essays into sections on the table, he makes quite a meal of it.
Gopnik lightens his deep research and knowledge with personal anecdotes. If he's writing about, say, the localism trend, he's not just reading every book on the subject, he's also trekking to the Bronx to find a live chicken for dinner. He recalls a childhood meal at Howard Johnson's before bursting the myth that the French Revolution gave rise to the restaurant. (Based on his reading of "a clutch of scholars, many of them, interestingly, women," it dates at least 20 years prior. Interesting indeed.) If he's following the crumbs of dessert back to pre-Crusades diets, it's because he stopped eating sweets to avoid middle-aged spread.
The information is impressive, but Gopnik's elegant prose is occasionally pocked with thudding pomposity.
He also presents theories on the moral value of taste, then ties them up with a bow: "We are what we eat? Probably closer to the truth to say that we eat what we are: The total self we bring to the table shapes the way we choose, and even how we chew. Our morals and our manners together drive our molars."
Bravo to Gopnik for tackling the true meaning behind a trend. Let's hope those unsuspecting readers seeking a vicarious feast will be charmed by the notion of thinking before they eat.
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