Fork it Over

The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater

Alan Richman

Buy it here

An odd mix of food writing and travel writing where the travelling part is way more interesting than the food. The food articles are good, mind you, dishy and full of gastronomic mots justes; when Richman goes to eat at the same Michelin three-star restaurant for ten days to see what happens, he gives us gossip, scenery, and tastes aplenty. He’s unafraid to slaughter sacred cows, as his demolition of Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse proves. And his encomia (to Jewish waiters, to a cheese shop in Corona, Queens) feel all the more sincere for his frequent playful gibes.

But the articles about going to Shanghai to see whether it qualifies as a gastronomic capital or visiting Vietnam, where Richman fought Communism for a few years, show just enough of these troubled lands that it’s extremely disappointing when Richman ultimately narrows his focus to food. You want it to be the other way around: the weird European aspirations of Vietnam’s grand hotel restaurants should lead to a consideration, however fleeting, of what-all this is doing here in the first place. Here, they just make for memorable or unmemorable meals, nothing more.

Still, if you don’t have to pay anything for it (I was borrowing it), it’s a good read.

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