Customer Reviews

The Foodie Handbook: The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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.

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...)

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.

Our reviewer had this to say: Pim has a unique voice that is able to explain familiar topics in an enjoyable way, and new topics in an encouraging manner. You can almost imagine her telling you, "Ah, there's nothing to it," and you feel like you actually can. She exhibits these qualities best in her collection of recipes. Without much effort, you can produce impressive results in your kitchen, as long as you use the best ingredients you can manage.

However, the selection of recipes sometimes seems arbitrary. The perfect roast chicken and easy (pan-)roast potatoes are suddenly followed by pad thai for beginners to further illustrate her point about anti-recipes, and with a preface on how popular the recipe is on her blog and how frequently it's linked to and shared. While it is a fantastic recipe, it is a rephrasing of the recipe on her blog, adding to the feeling that the book is at times just a supplement to the Chez Pim website.

The third chapter, "How to drink like a foodie," is of interest because Pim attempts to cover briefly subjects for which whole books have been written. She gives plenty of practical tips on how not to be a slave to wine scores and critics, and instead form your own notes and opinions. There is a curiously lengthy section about how to marry wine and Thai food.

The last section is "How to be a fabulous foodie." Leave alone the fact that lists reduce everything to David-Letterman-like randomness: why fifty? The items themselves are a mixed bag. Several of them have me nodding in agreement: go native, pick your own berries, go on a quest for the best, learn to cook your mum's or dad's best dish. However, the others just serve to confound and contradict her complaint in the introduction- that there are those who admonish us into doing things the most expensive way possible. Sip a perfect espresso at Caffè Mulassano in Turin! Take your lover on a trip to Olivier Roelliner in Cancale, Brittany! Eat a plate of truffe bel humeur at the restaurant l'Ambroisie in Paris! Why? Because it's her story on how she became the fabulous foodie that she is, and somehow it feels like you have to live it in order to be worthy of calling yourself one. It's suddenly not enough that you abandon Starbuck's for the best quaint neighborhood espresso place, eat in your country's most revered French restaurant, or forage your own mushrooms- you have to fly your way to become a fabulous foodie.

She may be that encouraging voice that tells you that you can do it, but it seems like there are a lot of things you don't need to do to become a foodie.

I had never heard of Ms. Pim, let alone Chez Pim, before ordering this book through Amazon Vine ... but I like food (although I abhor the word "foodie") and the price was right (thank you, Amazon Vine) so I thought I'd give it a shot. I skimmed through the book quickly when I first got it and was immediately turned off by what came off as the smugness and arrogance (and excessive number of pictures) of the author. I was reminded of why I dislike the word "foodie", especially when used self-referentially: it is usually indistinguishable from "food snob". I put the book down and moved on to other things for a few months.

Last week I decided to give the book a second chance. I was able to put aside my gut-level first reaction and evaluate the book more analytically ... and found that I still disliked it. The content is not well organized and at its core, most of the advice should be common-sense to anyone who enjoys food, "foodie" or not: buy local, buy seasonal, do your research, don't be afraid to ask questions, don't eat kangaroo in Spain, etc. The snobbery would be bearable if it was at least informative or educational. Take the "Sushi Bar 101" which boils down to "if you're eating at sushi bars that serve the unwashed masses, get what everyone else is getting ... if you're special like me and know the secret handshake to get into elite sushi bars, get what the chef recommends." 99% snobbery, 1% information. For that matter, Pim's "advice" for eating at three-star restaurants strikes me as somewhat ironic: it is a little like giving advice on how to enjoy flying first-class. The fact that you're already AT a three-star restaurant (or flying first class) is 99% of the battle! Granted, one probably can't be a foodie without at least a little bit of disposable income ... but for the majority of us, who can't afford to eat at a three star restaurant in Europe every day of the week, there is little on how to be a foodie on a more middle-class budget.

As others have noted, the "50 things every foodie should do, or at least try, once in her (his) life" section is so random that it's laughable. "Eat a peach" is next to "drop your life savings at a French restaurant". There appears to be little reason for inclusion or exclusion on this list other than "take my queen-of-the-foodies' word for it". Even simple sub-headings (e.g. "Simple Pleasures", "Cooking Tools & Accessories", "How to Blow an Inheritance from a Rich Uncle") would've at least added a little bit of order.

At the end of the day, the problem is that as "queen of the foodies", Pim is essentially an expert amateur. What expertise she has is second-hand from the "real" experts, and what advice she has is based unscientifically on her own experiences and interests rather than generalizable attributes. She can pass on some good recipes (and I will say that many look good--although they also appear to largely be available for free on her blog) but if I ask myself what truly valuable, explicit or tacit knowledge about furthering my own enjoyment of food has been attained by reading this book I lack an answer. I happened to check out a coffee-table book (500 Food Journeys of a Lifetime) from the library the other day that honestly sparked my imagination as a "foodie" exponentially more than this book by a self-styled expert foodie. The reviews here suggest that many other people who enjoy food simply do not enjoy this book on enjoying food. What does that say?

Not enjoyable, not very educational ... as someone who enjoys food, this was a disappointing read.

In The Foodie Handbook: The (almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy popular food blogger Pim Techamuanvivit sets out to create a manual on how to be a foodie covering topics like tasting, drinking, and cooking. As someone who has enjoyed reading her blog I was looking forward to this book.

Unfortunately, my verdict is that while her blog is an enjoyable read this book for me was not. The biggest problem I had with the book was the organization and selection of content. Much of the topics in the book felt relatively disconnected from one another and didn't flow particularly well. This works in blogging, where posts are often stand alone and don't build from one to the next, but in a book it just felt sloppy. There was nothing really pushing me forward to want to read more, which surprised me since I was well aware of her tone and writing style and expected to enjoy it. The material she chooses to include is also random at time and seems to be more based in her own personal experience than what generally might make a good foodie. This particularly comes out in her list of fifty things every foodie should do, or at least try, once in his/her life. It comes out in things like "Eat a Yangcheng hairy crab, preferably in or near Yancheng Lake in China and take your lover on a trip to Olivier Roellinger in Cancale, Brittany.

I will also say that the stuff I agreed with most was also the stuff that seemed the most obvious and that you would not need a book to tell you, i.e. to eat locally, try picking you own food, and get really good quality knifes. They are the exact things you hear about constantly in food magazines and blogs. It made me wonder if she was really trying to go after a more novice audience, which seems odd considering I would expect this book to be most popular among Chez Pim readers and active members of the food blogging community.

I was willing to overlook some of the organizational issues if the recipes in the 'How to Cook Like a Foodie' section were solid. The strength in her recipes is that ultimately they are able using a few really good quality ingredients and coaxing the flavor out intelligently so you get the most punch possible. The problem is the recipes are laid out so poorly that they are not easy to cook from. Recipes start in the middle of the page and often trail over the course of a couple pages forcing you to flip through pictures to get to the next direction. They are also verbose at times rather than getting to the point. (This is especially the case for the Pad Thai recipe which is simple but requires reading several paragraphs to understand her method. All of this makes the recipes seem uninviting and a pain to make.

The bottom line is that this book is simply not worth it. If you're still on the fence about buying it I would recommend giving it a preview at your local library first. The greatest value of this book for me was that it forced me to think about what being a foodie means and to question whether it's determined by the things you do/rules you fulfill or an outlook and approach to food.

The Foodie Handbook is part cookbook, part Being a Gourmand For Dummies, and part vanity project for the author, all in an attractive paperback binding. The book is about 200 pages total, comprised of about forty or fifty recipes, fifty pages of photographs, and about eighty pages of other text ostensibly about how to be a "foodie."

The question that kept running through my head was "Who is such a book intended for?"

After a while, I concluded the book was mostly designed for...Pim and her career.

As a cookbook, I don't find any rhyme or reason to the recipe selection beyond being dishes the author enjoys and presumably knows how to cook. They range from pad thai to risotto to fruit tarts. Personally, I choose cookbooks that show me how to make dishes I'm interested in, or cover a certain style or ethnic cuisine, so I'll have a reference if I decide to make a Moroccan dish or something with shrimp or a root vegetable. A cookbook of recipes Pim Techamuanvivit happens to like is not a very useful resource for me.

The photographs are embarrassing, since, besides the pictures that illustrate the recipes, which are pretty enough although not intended to be instructive, about a third of them are of Ms. Techamuanvivit mugging for the camera. "Here's me, stirring a pot!" "Here's me--sipping a glass of wine!" "Me again, sniffing fruit!" All apparently done on the same photo shoot. I can imagine Martha Stewart doing something like this. Perhaps it ought to have been titled The Narcissist's Handbook.

The purported meat of the book is Ms. Techamuanvivit's advice on how to be a "foodie." This consists of some elementary suggestions about how to select wine (e.g., "red meat with red wine, white meat with white wine"), which would appeal to those seeking to move beyond Blue Nun; philosophical musings such as "learn to cook, not follow recipes" (how, you ask? "by cooking"), which is a little silly coming from an author offering recipes, and who isn't known as a cook; and a few feints in the direction of buying local and visiting farmers' markets, etc. but without substance--she refers readers to Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma for any details, apparently believing that if you really want to be a "foodie" it's far more important to travel to foreign countries and dine at their most prestigious restaurants than to really understand where your food comes from, how it's grown, and why it's worth going out of your way to buy locally grown organic produce. She spends much more time offering advice that seems to convey worldly wisdom but has limited practical value. ("It never hurts to learn something about a restaurant before you go." No doubt.) ("Avoid restaurants that serve truffles in summer." OK, I will. But how about restaurants in the southern hemisphere?)

Then there's a section on how to be a "fabulous foodie," which is what the author considers herself to be, and this means having the funding only someone quite wealthy or being paid to eat and travel would likely have: "Eat a Yangcheng hairy crab, preferably in or near Yangcheng Lake in China" (how "near" is near enough to qualify for foodiedom, one wonders), "Eat a wild bird during game season in Europe" (does it have to still be alive when I eat it? Is Turkey part of Europe?). Or being insufferably trendy: "Throw a Locavore party." (You know, once, just for the thrill of it, before you and your "foodie" friends go back to talking about the meal they flew eight thousand miles to enjoy.)

To me, this is ninety percent snobbery and ten percent helpful exposure to some unusual eating experiences. I'd much rather read an interesting person's memoir that incidentally describes some wonderful restaurants, or watch Babette's Feast, than read this preening twaddle. Regardless of how many exotic ingredients she's imbibed or places she's traveled to, it feels to me she hasn't yet outgrown the need to impress, to follow food fashion, or to parrot--or contradict--the conventional wisdom. Perhaps this is the difference between being a "foodie" and being someone who knows how to enjoy food. Her book may minimally expand the reader's horizons, but will most appeal to those seeking to pick up some vocabulary to impress friends ("I just adore fugu with my Yangcheng crab and Blue Nun, don't you?")

Okay. I have to say that I'm not impressed with this "(almost) definitive guide to gastronomy" by "Pim, queen of food bloggers". I've followed several food blogs from time to time and learned much more in those blogs than in this book. But I did learn a lot about Pim from reading her "foodie" handbook:
1. Pim does not like beets and even the best beet recipe is lost on her
2. Pim has enough money to travel all over the world eating food
3. Pim loves truffles but scoffs at truffle oil
4. Pim eats at fancy restaurants most people can't afford
5. Pim is Thai and thinks fruity wines go best with Thai food
6. Pim likes adding vanilla beans to most desserts
7. Pim likes "simple" foods with just a few exotic ingredients
8. Pim thinks boxed wines can only be enjoyed by people who don't have refined tastes in wine

But I don't think Pim and I can be friends because there's a difference between being a foodie and being a food snob. I think Pim tries not to be a food snob (or "empress" as she likes to say), but she really is. According to her:
1. I'm supposed to go to expensive restaurants enough to be known by name and what I like to order
2. I'm supposed to poo poo out of season ingredients
3. I shouldn't eat at restaurant with a large menu or one that has menu items from multiple cultures
4. I'm supposed to order wine with my meals
5. I'm supposed to travel the world eating local
6. I should return a knife with a small spot on it or ask my waiter to replace my water glass if it has too much ice in it
7. I'm not supposed to like unsophisticated sushi that has has avocado in it, has sauce on it, or is served with a dollop of wasabi.

Let's face it, when 17 out of your 50 things "every foodie" must do includes traveling abroad to do it, I think you've alienated 98% of your foodie readership. I don't think that you have to have lots of vacation time to burn, be rich, or have access to exotic ingredients to enjoy food. Why not tell how to order more authentic dishes from foreign restaurants rather than the Americanized fare instead of telling what restaurants I must visit around the world? Also, the section of the book devoted to drinking like a foodie was nearly unreadable unless you're familiar with scores of different types of wines. Surely drinking like a foodie doesn't rely entirely on drinking wine. There are so many more things in the world to drink besides wine. How about a mango lassie at an Indian restaurant or a drink made of fresh cantaloupe juice at a Mexican restaurant?

When I started reading this book, I thought that the point was to show that the best food is often simple like Warm Apricots With Honey and Saffron or Simple Bread and Onion Soup. She does have some excellent-looking recipes scattered throughout the book. While some of them do call for simple ingredients, others would require a citywide or internetwide search for the ingredients (hibiscus flowers, truffles, lychee, fancy oils, etc.). But that's not a bad thing. It's nice to learn about something new like hibiscus to add to something common like strawberries. I'm excited, too, about trying her Pad Thai recipe since it's her signature dish. She offers an idea for having a Pad Thai party and having everyone bring one of the ingredients for Pad Thai. She also offers the idea of creating a signature dish of your own though trying out variations on the recipe until it's uniquely and perfectly yours.

Don't get me wrong, this book isn't bad, but I'd love to see another foodie write a response to this book that is less food snobbish. Sure, it's fine to eschew processed foods in favor of fresh foods, it's great to insist on quality ingredients, and it's interesting to see what the world has to offer. However, Pim's a bit too snobby for my tastes. I'm sure that there are surely others who are bigger food snobs than Pim. However, I think I'll stick to my own level of foodiness for now. I'll order the sushi with the avocado, not go to restaurants I can't afford, drink Riesling (and sometimes boxed wine) with anything I want to, and cook with the spices in my cabinet that are more than 6 months old. And I'm okay with that.

In the hand of someone else -- someone who has more experience, deeper knowledge, and the maturity to relay his/her knowledge to the general public in a much less egocentric way -- this whole "how to be a foodie" concept might have made much more sense. And this is what makes this book such a turn-off. It is written by someone whose ambition far outstrips her abilities. I'm quite certain that the easily foreseen failure of this book has come as a complete surprise to a grandiose self-image behind it.

I have to agree with every reviewer who has picked up on the superiority complex, the blatant self-exaltation, etc. But to be fair to the author, to stand out in this business, it's imperative that you present yourself as a know-it-all or at least someone who has access to authorities in the field. There's no denying the author has done a marvelous job in this area. So the reviewers who have criticized this book or the author for being elitist may want to consider the possibility that the author intends to come across that way. In fact, it almost seems like while she prescribes the things you need to do to become a true foodie, she doesn't really believe that most people will be able to take her advice or hope that they will. And that's okay by her. After all, if this book has successfully spawned a generation of foodies who live the kind of lifestyle which the author lives, the very thing that has thus far set her apart from the average foodie would lose its voyeuristic value.

The question of who the audience is has come up several times in the reviews of this book. For me, it's quite clear. The people who would want a book such as this are the same people who can't get enough of the author's blog, who can't wait to see what fabulous places beyond their reach the author takes them to, who are impressed with every name-dropping, every unnecessary inclusion of French words. For the rest of us, I can't imagine having a book titled "The Foodie Handbook" in my house in plain view for house guests to see. Who wants to give people the impression that they're not a foodie but aspires to one?

The publisher has no doubt learned a lesson. A popular blog does not necessarily turn itself into a book worth buying. For a book to be resold used on Amazon for less than a dollar after having been released for less than a year speaks volumes of its spectacular failure. The intended audience seems to have been accurately identified from the start, and that is the author's loyal blog fans who are easily impressed with the portrayal of her fabulous lifestyle and enjoy living vicariously through her travels. What was miscalculated was just how willing these people would be to pay for the book. Ironically, those who are the most impressed with the author seem to be the ones who can't and won't pay for contents they have been getting for free, and those who are in a position to live the lifestyle prescribed by the author rightly recognize that they have no use for this book.

Pim Techamuanvivit's The Foodie Handbook is a mess of interesting and sometimes deceptively simple, brilliant ideas, as well as a bit of hypocrisy, that has an unfortunately poor handle of the identity of its audience.

First off, and I admit that this is a minor gripe in the design that has little to do with the content of the book, but the cover is horrendous. The "dust jacket" is actually an elongated and folded back-cover that wraps itself around the front cover. It's a neat gimmick that loses most of its charm as the book slips in your grasp while reading, and inconveniently by design can not be removed. Anyways, after reading the cover blurb and intro I was both a bit frightened by its crassness and intrigued by the relatable and all encompassing tone I thought the book was going to take; enjoying food for what makes it great (as we all have to eat, so why not do it well.) It felt crass in its description and presentation. From the cover: "You need to know Pim, queen of the food bloggers. Pim is the knowledgeable foodie that everyone wants as a friend..." Humble much? Also, similar to an anecdote early in the first chapter where she relates that classy people don't use "classy" to describe themselves, the overuse of the idiotic term foodie is already beneath the aspirations of the book. Add the fact that it's billed as a handbook, an almost definitive guide at that, and one has to wonder what's in store. People who excel in most every field don't use how-to guides, they simply do whatever it is they have a passion for, stumbling and flailing along as they go.

Whereas the initial presentation bugged me, the intro completely won me over. Pim essentially suggests cutting away both the pretension and inapproachability of haute cuisine and the highly processed mediocrity of most fast and convenient foods to try and get back to the primal lust for the basics in what tastes good. In this I got the impression that she was speaking to the average citizen of the planet, the guy or gal who gives in to fast food too often and is a little afraid of branching out. It's just as okay to enjoy a Kit Kat as it's important to seek out the freshest, local, and seasonal fruit.

Very quickly, though, the book devolves a bit. I think my main issue is with the organization, presentation, and clashing ideas. The book reads like a blog, full of top ten lists, unsupported declarations, and admonishments that aren't explained or given enough room to breathe and make sense. Initially she addresses the reader that is a novice to fine dining (this is a handbook after all), and within pages she's warning us to make adequate plans before jet-setting abroad for a meal in a 3-star restaurant. Seriously? If anywhere, that belongs at the end of a "handbook" There's also a chapter on eating at sushi bars that's the antithesis of informative. It ends with nonsensical pop culture references to Kill Bill, not to mention eating at a specific bar that's so exclusive the readers wouldn't be able to get in if they tried. Again, who is this book for?

Pim is also unfocused when it comes to clear cut ideas. For an almost definitive handbook/guide she breaks her own rules before she's even taken the time to define them. She writes about the asinine rigidity of the standard recipe format and how it's absurd to suggest a specific quotient of cooking time when there are far too many factors for this type of homogenized consistency. This is chapters after she's already presented such recipes. In another section she advises against being a snobbish know-it-all, illustrating how much better the service and dining experience will be when one acts with a modicum of politeness, civility and curiosity. This is followed up by a section detailing how to be a stubborn, childish guest when dealing with difficult snobbish servers. Inconsistent back-peddling like this again feels a lot like writing for a blog where there's time to grow and change as a person between posts. In a book it comes across as being ill prepared.

All in all there are a lot of bright ideas that are subdued by writing that cut its teeth on a format that doesn't translate well to its lofty aspirations. It falls prey to the stereotypes of the elitist, name-dropping "foodie" (it's one thing to attribute a quote or idea, but it's another to reiterate that these celebrity chefs and jazz musicians are personal friends.) There's not a lot of substance to back up this sort of approach, as again an interesting idea that isn't fleshed out is just that, only an interesting idea.