Customer Reviews

Food: True Stories of Life on the Road (Travelers' Tales Guides)

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These are stories of how travelers made connections with people and places through the medium of food. Some of the stories are hilarious, others make you want to hug someone you love. Almost all of them will make you want to learn more about other places and cultures. This is simply one of the best books on food I have ever read.

As a new, first-time parent, I expected that my poor, sleep-deprived brain wouldn't be fully capable of the sensory imagination that would make this book worthwhile.

But the first story transported me immediately with its introductory account of the narrator landing in southern Mexico: the opening of the plane door is "as if the stewardess had opened the door of a blast furnace fueled by jasmine, corn husks, bacon grease, and Clorox bottles." What a striking medley of aromas, and what a spot-on take on what it feels like to land in a strange place with your senses on full alert. Everyone who has fully experienced the excitement of travel can imagine the mindset of the narrator, the way that we become so stimulated by our new, strange surroundings, almost like being a child again.

That is essentially what gave this the potential to be a fantastic book. For it combines three aspects of the world that can make life more immediate and powerful: travel, with its capacity to turn us all into wide-eyed kids; food, with its tastes and smells and rituals that may comfort or stimulate us; and literature, the sheer joy of words, and the electric spark one feels when one reads great writing.

I say "potential" because it took great writing to turn the concept into a successful reality. At the risk of gushing, I literally felt a surge of happiness as I read this book, simply because of my aesthetic pleasure over how well almost every story was written. Not that my pleasure was unmixed with a bit of humility; travel brings out the literary genius in so many people, this book caused me to despair a bit over ever writing as well as so many others do. It was even interesting to read the little author profiles at the end of each section, and to see what types of nomadic, improvised lives many of these fine writers are leading.

I am a great fan of the Travelers' Tales series, but this just might be their best book yet (I have raved about a few other volumes on Amazon, but readers of my other reviews may want to consult the review dates to see which have been supplanted by this one.)

The selections are almost universally strong; most anthologies contain a few weak selections, but this one had very few, and even those were enjoyable enough. I would single out the following pieces as exceptional: "Apron Strings" (quoted above), "Breaking Bread," "Bananas," "India on an Empty Stomach," "The Monsoon Cocktail," and "Momos at Tashi's."

"Bananas" is a story of the kindness of strangers, but I loved it mainly because it conveys how the tropics can make a Coca-Cola more refreshing than you ever thought possible. I related to "Momos" because of the way the author separated herself from group festivities while abroad, leaving herself available for a more meaningful, individual connection. "The Monsoon Cocktail" made me want to book a seat on the train that it describes, but I loved it most for the way it conveys how a fulfilling trip can linger in comforting memory; the author, caught in a monsoon during a SE Asia train trip, forever after associates the beating of raindrops with that cherished memory. And this happens to all travelers, I suspect; these associations become as powerful and comforting for us as those that connect us to early childhood.

I could easily have written a much longer list of favorite selections. I indulge a silly quirk as I read the Travelers' Tales books; after each group of five stories, I rank them in my journal, and at the end of the entire volume, I then try to pick out the 5-10 that I like the most for future reference. Boy was that tough in this instance, as there were easily a dozen stories that I hope to read repeatedly.

My advice to readers; don't swallow this one down too fast. Read it slowly, repeat the good parts, and milk the experience for all it's worth. Savor!