Customer Reviews

Slow Food: The Case for Taste (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History)

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

 

 

It's rare to find a book that's informative, convivial, and inspiring. Carlo Petrini's Slow Food: The Case for Taste is such a book. True to his Italian character and culture, he describes the Slow Food movement with style and exuberance. He would make a convert of me if I had not already embraced his philosophy for the "good life". I share his passion for excellence in food and wine and the responsibilities that are attached to this pleasure. Petrini would make an excellent dinner guest, bringing gusto and reverence for the meal served and adding intelligent, sometimes jovial chatter throughout each course.

Back in the 70s, E.F. Schumacher wrote Small is Beautiful, creating a movement that eventually became a cliche. In smallness we find our human scale and through smallness it is possible to express our uniqueness. The Slow Food movement has taken this concept and added a few additional ingredients which make life pleasurable. I think Petrini's book can have as strong of an impact on the new millennium as Schumacher's book had in the 70s.

Much credit should be given to the translators for maintaining the integrity of Petrini's literary style.

Though the Slow Food is making appropriately Slow headway into U.S. consciousness, it has been an important and well-known influence on Italian culinary values for years. Slow Food: The Case for Taste is a good way to figure out what all the attention is about.

For anyone who doesn't know, Slow Food is the antithesis of "fast food," as it is represented by drive through burger restaurants, coffee in a to-go cup, and ready-to-eat microwave dinners. The 17-year-old organization was born from opposition to the opening of a McDonald's restaurant in Rome's iconic Piazza di Spagna (the effort was unsuccessful: that particular location is still open and it serves more than 8,000 hamburgers a day). From that beginning, it evolved to promote eateries that use fresh ingredients and preserve historical cuisines, to fund educational programs, and to encourage the movement's members to stop and smell the roses (and then to have a nice plate of pasta and glass of wine afterwards).

I'm a fan of many aspects of the Slow Food movement: I don't think there's a better guide to Italian restaurants than the Osterie d'Italia guide (available only in Italian). And the organization's educational programs have certainly heightened the awareness of good food and wine in Italy, something I have clearly benefited from. Overall, the emphasis on good, well-made, and unpretentious food and wine is something almost everyone can enjoy.

My main criticism of the Slow Food movement is that it seems to look at things too simply, divorcing the desire to eat and drink in a certain way and experience life under a certain set of rules from reality, often advocating actions -- such as the lengths someone should go to get the right garlic, or to eat in a proper restaurant, or decide how to vote on political issues -- that make less sense when taken in context. This all-or-nothing approach ends up sounding naive, and probably only undermines the validity of the organization's values. The weakness (apparent in this slim volume) means the book gets docked one star.

The other star is removed for sloppy translation and editing. Phrases are in some cases so badly translated that they can sound stilted and are sometimes difficult to understand. More importantly, editors appear to have simply translated a book written for an Italian audience without understanding that the values and context -- that word again: can anyone at Slow Food understand that different contexts require different reactions? -- are very different in the U.S., where this book has been marketed. There are several examples of this weakness, but the best comes from a passage talking about an appreciation for wine, where the book reads: "when they are old enough, the kids will develop a taste for Barolo" -- not in most families, given underage drinking laws and the fact that in the U.S. Barolo starts at $50-60 a bottle!

I have not read the Italian edition of this book, but I'm going to seek it out. My best guess is that this edition was rushed to press in order to capitalize on the notoriety of the Slow Food movement in the U.S. a few years ago, and so certain corners were cut and certain liberties were taken. If a second edition is in the works, I'll make a suggestion I wouldn't have guessed I'd have to make in connection with this movement: slow down! There's no hurry. It's better to get it right later than it is to do a sloppy job sooner.

"May suitable doses of of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency." -Slow Food "Manifesto"

Far from what one of the "professional" reviewers here at Amazon called "didactic" (although I think he meant to say "pedantic"), Carlo Petrini sets out in brief (110 pages), a concise explanation of the need for Slow Food. While one may indeed need to be literate to understand what he has to say, it is nonetheless an approachable, comprehensible explanation of a maligned and misunderstood movement. Slow Food is NOT just a bunch of yuppie foodies stuffing their craws with foie gras. Recognizing that the enjoyment of wholesome food is essential to the pursuit of hapiness, Slow Food is an educational organization dedicated to stewardship of the land and ecologically sound food production; to the revival of the kitchen and the table as centers of pleasure, culture and community; to the invigoration and proliferation of regional, seasonal culinary traditions; and to living a slower and more harmonious rhythm of life.

How can you argue with that? We will take an enourmous leap forward when we as a country and a culture put as much thought and effort into our food as we do into our entertainment. Read the book and stop being enslaved by the industrial standardization of tastes.

This book offers concise information about the history and various activities of the Slow Food Movement. The book is divided into four chapters. After an outline of the origins of the movement, the second chapter on cultivating diversity argues for the need to preserve food localities, such as the Italian Osteria. The third chapter describes Slow Food's educational goals with regards to nutrition, agriculture, and taste, followed by a final section on genetically modified organisms (GMO) and ways to promote biodiversity.
Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food and author of this book, convincingly shows how the standardization of food and tastes leads to the loss of (bio)diversity and describes measures that Slow Food has initiated to counterbalance this tendency, such as taste education in schools and events such as the Salone del Gusto, an international exhibition where producers and distributors present their local foods. The overall tone of this book is balanced. Also, difficulties that Slow Food has encountered are addressed, such as the struggles of the movement to position itself between the political left and more conservative forces in Italy.
However, in my opinion the volume could provide more information on how consumers can incorporate the philosophy of Slow Food into their daily lives. Despite the need to safeguard regional foods, the movement focuses mainly on its global structure and aims in order to achieve this goal. More information on how a more effective communication network between producers and consumers of endangered foods can be installed on a local basis would be desirable in this book.

In 1989, author, cook and visionary Carlo Petrini founded the International Slow Food Movement as response to our fast-food lifestyle. The movement now has a magazine, a web site, and over 400,000 followers organized into local chapters. With a foreword written by Alice Waters, it's no surprise to learn that Petrini advocates the same philosophy as Chez Panisse's founder: traditional recipes, locally grown foods and wines, and eating as an event.
It's a small book, only 170 pages, but it packs a wallop as a philosophy, a recipe for Life.

I could frankly have done without the multiple preambles. The text can be difficult because it's translated from Italian, but I was nonetheless inspired to read little bits to my unsuspecting husband. Some quotable bits in there, and interesting to know the background on something that is now so amorphous.

If you didn't know anything about the slow food movement, this book will give you a comprehensive view. The description of the movement's principles and strategies to change our eating habits, gastronomic knowledge, and to change, in fact, our fast-life western culture, convinced me that slow food has gone beyond their pseudo-elitist confinement, into a whole new category, that of being a plausible alternative for a real and sustainable cultural revolution. One of the best features in the book is Carlo Petrini, its author and the founder of the movement. His enthusiastic spirit is dressed with a no-nonsense attitude; his delivery of the information is effective and to the point. No word is wasted ... just the way I like it!

If you are looking for an inspiring read about the slow food movement look elsewhere. This book though short should have been much shorter, possibly a magazine article, and would have been served well by an editor with a deft hand in the kitchen. This tough old roast should have been better trimmed of fat, less excessively salted with pompous and sometimes anti-American asides, peppered more frequently with inspiring attitudes about food cooked slowly and with care instead of platitudes about the superiority of the authors mindset and presented without the cheese. This book serves up bombast like it was beluga caviar and would put someone who is being introduced to the slow food movement off their feed. Pass on this and get the latest edition of Best Food Writing 2008 instead. Your sensuous feast with a hot Mediterranean lover has turned out to be more baloney than bolognese.

Its a decent book but is way to elitist for my taste. Read the back cover and whose quoted? High priced foodies like Mario Batali, who has a show on the FoodNetwork and overpriced cookware and other goods he hawks for big bucks. What's slow about that? Or Robert Mondavi and Michael Romano of the Union Square Cafe, both upscale people. And that's the rub with me. Slow Food seems to be yet another snob idea.


Talk to those of us who have been authentic slow food folk for decades who have been teased by the upscale crowd because we have vegetable gardens rather than 7k sq foot homes. Mocked because we cook in crock pots or make home cooked meals where the whole family sits down to eat every night. Folks who don't drive Mercedes, but beat up old trucks that carry feed to out chickens, goats and Guernsey cows.

So who may benefit from the book? Beats me. Slow Food in my opinion is just the newest fad that most who read the book may try but wont stick with. Which is sad.