The Foodie Handbook: The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy [Paperback]

Pim Techamuanvivit (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 26, 2009

From Pim Techamuanvivit, knowledgeable foodie and "queen of the food bloggers," comes this engaging guidebookto all things food-related. Pim has toured the globe to bring hungry people up to date with what's happening in thefood world through Chez Pim, a Web site that attracts 10,000 hits a week. In The Foodie Handbook, she collects tips, secrets, anecdotes, and recipes from the world's top chefs, including Anthony Bourdain and Fergus Henderson. Food lovers everywhere will relish Pim's sage advice, including tips on outsnobbing the staff of a Michelin three-star restaurant, preparing simple but intensely flavored dishes at home, and eating street food in any city in theworld.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Pim Techamuanvivit is the author of the popular food blog Chez Pim. Her stories, recipes, and photographs have been published in Food & Wine, the New York Times, Bon Appétit, and Men's Vogue.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (August 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811868532
• ISBN-13: 978-0811868532
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #501,242 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I'm a fan of the blog -- the book? Not so much, October 2, 2009

By 

Marcy L. Thompson (Sammamish, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Foodie Handbook: The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy (Paperback)

(What's this?)

Pim's blog is pretty fun and interesting. This book is, in parts, pretty fun and interesting. Unfortunately, it comes off as more of a print version of the blog than as a useful or interesting book.

She's an engaging writer and there are some lovely photographs in the book. Some of the recipes are wonderful; all the recipes are well-written and appear to make sense (I didn't try them all).

In the end, however, I think this book isn't really worth it. I just found it too annoying.

One problem with the book is that it's written like a blog, where the various parts have only a thematic connection. Another problem is that there's a bit too much self-aggrandizement for my taste. I don't need to know how amazingly popular the Pad Thai recipe on her blog is, especially when that popularity is illustrated with the number of links to it. Who cares? It's either a good recipe (which it is) or it's not. You got the book contract, honey, stop trying to sell us on your credibility.

Another problem is that there's an awful lot of generalization from her own experience to what other people should do. As others have pointed out, this last problem is well-illustrated with the "50 Things" list. First off, lists of 50 things (or 10 or 23) with only a flimsy connection between them work a lot better on blogs than in books. Worse, after assuring us throughout the previous part of the book that every "foodie" gets there in his or her own way, and admonishing us not to think that we have to do specific things to be a "foodie", she tops the book off with a list of specific ideas. Eat this dish at that restaurant! Return this food item even if in its out-of-seasonality, it sings to you of memories of another season, just because she said it's out of season!

All she had to do, really, was relabel that list as "The Top 50 Experiences That Made Me A Foodie" and she'd be home free. But turning that into a prescription for the rest of us at the end of a book telling us that prescriptions can't make a foodie is just self-indulgent and ridiculous.

Finally, although the recipes seem solid (and in a couple cases, even brilliant), they fall short of her goal. She starts out "How To Cook Like A Foodie" by asserting that there it's better not to cook from a recipe, and then launches into a series of recipes. I agree with her premise, but that doesn't mean I never read or use recipes. It means I know how to take a recipe and twist it to make it my own. If that's what she wanted to teach people to do, she went about it wrong. For instance, she talks about how she learned to make a roast chicken, and then she says that her way is the one, the only way. Seems like she's contradicting herself. If she'd said it was the one, the only way for her, fine. But her point started out being that the idea is to find what works for you and then hone it.

This whole section would have worked better if she'd offered recipes and then talked about how that process of twisting a recipe to make it your own. So here is a method that makes a basic roasted chicken. Here are some ways that you could personalize it. Try it, try some of the variations, see how they affect the outcome. Over time, you will discover your own "best roasted chicken". Then do it again -- here is a recipe for a basic fruit tart. Here are some ways to fiddle with it. Here are some things you might find handy to know when fiddling with baking recipes. Try some of the variations, keep the limitation in mind, and eventually, you will have a "best fruit tart" approach of your own.

Overall, I think that this book proves Pim is a great blog writer but not a very good book writer. Faults that are charming in a blog weigh down the book and make it not very good in the end.

Personally, I'd skip the book and stick to the blog. It's a great blog.


P.S. The word "Foodie" is so stupid that I almost couldn't open the book at all. The most passionate eaters and cooks I know despise that word, for a reason. This review is not very good, but it's quite frankly far more positive than I would ever have expected to write about a book with that title.

140 of 151 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars First, become fabulously wealthy, October 21, 2009

By 

Zack Davisson "japanreviewed" (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Foodie Handbook: The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy (Paperback)

(What's this?)

That is the main item missing from author Pim Techamuanvivit's list of "Fifty Things Every Foodie Should Do, or at least try, once is his (her) life." Or maybe Pim didn't bother to mention it since the "wealthy" part is so obviously implied by the rest of her list, such as "Rent a house with a kitchen in Italy or France for a week" or "Eat a whole roasted turbot on the Basque coast in Spain" and "Dine at a Parisian 3-Star Restaurant." Or perhaps you could take Pim's "secret" advice on how to choose wine to go with your meal, by staying in the "middle" range of $75-$100 a bottle? Readers of Upscale - Living the Affluent Lifestyle or Conde Nast Traveler might find themselves nodding along at her sage advice.

I suppose wealth is all relative, but for me a hundred dollar bottle of wine would be more of a once-in-a-lifetime type of splurge for a special event, and not something that I would casually order a couple of (one red, one white at all times!) when I am trying out a new restaurant with friends. Pim's perspective is that of an upper-class San Francisco city-dweller who spends as much time out of the country as in it, and her name-dropping of thousand-dollar-a-meal restaurants (which, Pim assures us, you should visit several times in order to ingratiate yourself as a customer) complete with famous chefs being called by their first name comes off as more of a "Look at me! Isn't my life more fabulous than yours?" -type of thing rather than a cool book on food.

This is too bad, because there is almost a cool book on food buried inside "The Foodie Handbook." When Pim isn't glorying in the wonder that is Pim's life, she does have some interesting comments on food and the joy of it all and some decent recipes as well. Like most people reading this book, I love food, I love flavor and cooking and all the different styles and varieties the world has to offer. I watch cooking shows and care about local cuisines and freshness and farmer's markets. There is some great cooking advice here, and my favorite section was on "How to make a perfect roast chicken." But that is only a portion of the book.

Ultimately, this book is more about Pim than about food. In fact, the whole point of the book seems to be posed to launch Pim as some sort of food celebrity, maybe as a ticket to her own food show or something. Almost all of the photographs are of Pim. Pim smiling and laughing. Pim enjoying a glass of wine in a beautiful location. Pim stirring a pot. A close-up of Pim's eyes while she sips a cup of coffee. A veritable Pim pin-up book.

Maybe I am just jealous, but I really don't need or want to read about all of these great food adventures that I will never be able to experience due to financial reasons, and hear them being tossed off as "Things every foodie should try." We would like to try Pim. Trust me. But most of us just can't.

Or maybe this book is exactly why I love food but tend to dislike foodies. Enjoying things doesn't have to come with such snobbery and games of one-upmanship(Pim gives some advice on how you can "out-foodie" people at a table...). I would rather listen to Anthony Bourdain (Or "Tony" as Pim calls him!) talk about great street food and the viberant blend of culture and food, than rave and compare notes over who the new "hot chef" is and swap advice on "How to score a table at elBulli." (Another one on Pim's list.)

On a final note: Yes, as everyone has mentioned the actual design of this book is pretty bad. I have never seen such an unfortunate cover design, which looks cool but is entirely unfunctional for reading. The little cut out box (showing Pim's face, of course!) tore within a few pages. Also, the recipes included inside are all broken up onto two pages, so as a cookbook it is decidedly hard to work from. (Don't worry though, even though Pim includes many of her popular recipes, she also tells us that cooking from a recipe is a bad thing, so we can ignore her recipes...)

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars pretentious!, July 18, 2010

By 

Vivien Li (Westwood (Los Angeles), CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Foodie Handbook: The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy (Paperback)

I've never written a truly scathing review (why ruin anyone's day, even if it's just my own?), but I really thought this book was dreadful. I read a lot of food-related books, including cookbooks, and I think it's entirely possible for food bloggers to be worthy of book contracts. But in this case what works just fine for a blog feels unacceptable in a book, not to mention one with such an authoritative tone and ambition.

Pim's blog is by and large a gift to the "foodie" community. How else would we experience the Food and Wine Festival in Aspen, or travel to Tokyo on a food mission? She has a rarefied existence among celebrated chef friends (including her boyfriend David Kinch, who is chef at Manresa), and her sharing her experience with us is wonderful. This is not to say that the blog doesn't frequently have jumbled phrases or hit-you-over-the-head snark, but the content is free. She has no obligation to be on topic or to write cohesive posts. Basically we have no right to hold her to any standard on her personal blog. But then now she's written this book, and almost immediately she says things that rub us readers the wrong way. She starts out by claiming to want to make us fall in love with food AGAIN. Wait... but I've never stopped! It's that (sometimes) subtle presumption that really rubs me the wrong way. There is consistently the impression that she knows better, that she is a food purist (or connoisseur or something) and that we are not, by dint of not having her specific, fabulous experiences. She must teach us how to appreciate food, thus giving rise to the infamous list of musts.

It must have occurred to her or her editor that creating a list of must-experiences would be overbearing and condescending. The fact is most foodies know that dining at El Bulli (a celebrated Spanish restaurant) is a worthy experience, as is drinking espresso in Turin. It's just out of reach for most people. So I wonder why she didn't just recast her list as a set of interesting experiences and describe them to us? That would have been informative and interesting rather than pretentious.

Pim is arrogant, as may be a lot of chefs or so-called foodies. But her overall approach to addressing us readers just isn't smart. Nobody insists on her humility, but her consistent attempts at playing up her superiority is just bad writing and, on her editor's part, bad editing. She is referred to on her book's dust jacket as the "queen" of all food bloggers. By whom? There's no attribution. I wish this book were better.