Customer Reviews

In Bad Taste?: The Science and Adventures Behind Food Delicacies

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First, the positives - this book documents the provenance and the science of some truly rare, truly weird, gourmet foods. You have to respect Marcone for actually going to see, for himself, the civet poop that is the source of kopi luwak. The book goes considerably deeper into both science and geography than Fierce Food: The Intrepid Diner's Guide to the Unusual, Exotic, and Downright Bizarre. The author shows quite a bit of the fascinating recklessness-in-the-service-of-taste that you see in Gastronaut: Adventures in Food for the Romantic, the Foolhardy, and the Brave BUT (and this is significant) is no where near the writer that either Weil or Gates is. The writing style is pedantic and wordy and somehow manages to make even the time the author was almost eaten by a lion seem dull. The stories are neat, the science is good, but as one plods through yet another diversion where Marcone heads off by himself to ponder why there is injustice in the world (ok, I get it, he has a conscience... but I didn't buy this for weak reflections on the meaning of the Boxing Day Tsunami.... I bought this to read about science and food!) one feels her time is being wasted. The contents of this book, properly edited, would have fit without significant omission into a New Yorker article. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen is a better read on the same general topic, and it's an encyclopedia.

First I can definitely say that this edition is durable and readable and if somebody is searching for which edition to get I recommend this.

Apart from that, the book is... lets say ok. If you do have other books to read then don't get this. It does sound appealing and I was curious enough to buy this but if I knew more maybe I wouldn't. The information you get does give some please to your curiosity but definitely not enough to justify the whole book. The narrator is a bit cheesy and makes a big deal out of nothing. At least this is what I got from it.

An overall mediocre read for me. Maybe if you are more in to strange "delicacies" than me you will like it.

From reading the back of this book, I pictured Massimo Marcone to be some cross between Indiana Jones and Sheldon Cooper. After reading it I would also add a a bit of a Bill Bryson when he is in his adventure/travel writer mode.

Massimo is a food scientist. He explores the world in search of the most exotic and often times bizarre foods. Many have heard of Kopi Luwak otherwise known as scat coffee, but is it real? Marcone sets out to find out. Indeed he finds finds the coffee that is collected by the scat (ie: poop) of the civet. He then scientifically test it to find out if there is a difference between it and other coffee.

The discovery of Kopi Luwak is just the beginning. He also travels the globe in search of argon oil that is made from nuts ingested by goats, edible birds nest in Malaysia, various bugs eaten in Asia and the worst to me Frazigu cheese, a rotten cheese with live maggots in it. I will tell you I had a hard time reading this chapter.

I found odd the inclusion of the morel mushroom. Maybe it is because I am from a morel eating region and admit I have joined in on the morel hunting frenzy, but it just doesn't seem to fit in with the bizarre nature of most of the food on this list.

The oddness of the food is clearly a draw to this book, but Marcone also has an ease in the way that he tells the story of his travels and his experiences in each locale. Whether it is getting lost in the Michigan woods or a potential lion attack in Africa these details make the stories come to life.

Food science professor Dr. Massimo Francesco Marcone, popularly dubbed the "Indiana Jones" of the food world, presents In Bad Taste?: The Adventures and Science Behind Food Delicacies, a behind-the-scenes look at some of the rarest and most bizarre edible commodities. From a rare type of coffee brewed from beans that have been excreted through the digestive system of a catlike Indonesian creature, to edible Malaysian bird nests, In Bad Taste? examines the question: why do people eat these unusual foods, and exactly what is it that makes a food a delicacy - its rarity, the bizarreness of its origins, or simply that others are willing to pay a lot of money to eat it? Or is there some other, truly quantifiable difference? A palatably wonderful tour of culinary oddities enthusiastically recommended for armchair gourmets and anyone curious about the most unusual dishes celebrated as food worldwide.