Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet World Food Italy

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a gem. Lonely Planet has some of the best, behind the scenes, adventurous and independent minded travel guides....."World Food, Italy" never strays from this focus. Better yet, it for the true food loving traveler. It doesn't provide tips on the hottest restaurants to visit in this vast dining paradise, but instead gives insight into Italian culture through food and describes each region by their food, letting you know, region by region, what delicacies just can't be missed. Excellent!

This small, hand-sized guide is packed with information about Italy and its food. There are useful maps, glossy color pictures and page after page of useful information about Italian cuisine, Italian food staples and specialties and drinks.

Plus, there are sections about Italian home cooking, regional food specialties and food celebrations, as well as tips about food shopping, and places to eat and drink.

There is even a 72-page guide to Italian food language.

I own the LP world food Hong Kong and it was so useful that I decided to purchase the Italian version. Even though I know quite a bit about Italian food, it was nice to read the background material and have information about customs. Further the book includes a listing of gelato flavors (essential) and a food glossary in the back. Although not quite as useful as the one for Hong Kong, it was still important to know what foods are particular specialties to what area - even if specific restaurants are not listed.

This is a pocket sized - well presented book. it contains many pictures, but when I had read it through, and browsed it a couple of times, I realized the images were nondescriptive and anonymous. I realized that I already knew 95% of the stuff - The book presents the basic stereotypical italian food (pretty well) - Pizza, and Pasta are highlighted, unfortunately I believe these dishes are over-represented when speaking about italian cuisine. The thing I thought I'd find most helpful was the dictionary on culinary terms in the end of the book. But at the restaurants I visited, I still managed to communicate sufficiently in english to understand what the food contained and what I'd like to order, still I was aided a couple of times by being able to look up a word. If you are completely unaware about italian cooking and will be visiting italy - then you may find the book helpful and informative.

I brought this book as a tool to help plan a trip to Italy. It helped to understand different variety of food and some food that was not familiar to us. Once in Italy, we try things we would not have known about if we did not read this book.