or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
Express Checkout with PayPhrase
What's this? | Create PayPhrase
More Buying Choices
67 used & new from $0.34

Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover's Courtship, with Recipes
 
See larger image
 
Tell the Publisher!
I’d like to read this book on Kindle

Don’t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here.

Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover's Courtship, with Recipes (Paperback)

~ Amanda Hesser (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)

List Price: $14.95
Price: $10.17 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $4.78 (32%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Want it delivered Tuesday, March 23? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details
27 new from $8.08 39 used from $0.34 1 collectible from $14.95

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover --  
Paperback $10.17  

Special Offers and Product Promotions


Frequently Bought Together

Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover's Courtship, with Recipes + The Cook and the Gardener : A Year of Recipes and Writings for the French Countryside + Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table, a Collection of Essays from the New York Times
Total List Price: $65.90
Price For All Three: $45.23

Show availability and shipping details


Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought


Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Cooking for Mr. Latte is a delightfully modern dating story, recipes included. It's the true story of the courtship between Amanda Hesser, a food writer for The New York Times and author of the award-winning cookbook The Cook and the Gardener, and writer Tad Friend, the titular Mr. Latte. Most of the book was written in installments for the New York Times Magazine, but fans of Hesser's writing will be happy to know that there are plenty of new stories and recipes to justify picking up the book version. Her tale ends happily ever after, but has enough ups and downs to keep it interesting. And it's not all about Mr. Latte. Ever wonder what it's like to eat out with foodie guru Jeffrey Steingarten? Chances are you guessed wrong.

Food is an important aspect of Hesser's life (though it wasn't for Mr. Latte when they met, making for some of the downs in the ups and downs), but it's not until you notice how seamlessly Hesser weaves her meals into her story that you realize how much of our lives and our memories revolve around food. By the time you get to the recipes, you've already salivated over the dishes and become emotionally attached to them. From her mother's Chocolate Dump-It Cake to the Ginger Duck her future mother-in-law made the first time they met, you'll love that Hesser pays such close attention and generously shares the recipes. Filled with everything from old-fashioned treats from her grandmother's kitchen to dishes from some of New York's hottest dining spots, this is one entertaining read that is sure to end up in your kitchen. --Leora Y. Bloom --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

A love affair with food: tender, wry, playful, truthful. To read Hesser's prose is to hunger for more. -- Nigella Lawson, author of Forever Summer, Nigella Bites, How to Eat, and How to be a Domestic Goddess

A reach as wide as Emeril Lagasse, sex appeal on par with that of TV-chef-cum-temptress Nigella Lawson, and a literary voice likened to that of M. F. K. Fisher. (Nina Willdorf - Boston Phoenix )

A totally lovable book, a kind of Bridget Jones for foodies. (Irene Sax - Epicurious.com )

A totally lovable book, a kind of Bridget Jones for foodies. -- Irene Sax, Epicurious.com

Charming and smart. (New York Times Book Review )

Charming and smart. -- New York Times Book Review

In a category all its own...weaves inviting recipes into delightful first-person prose. [Hesser] is abundantly talented. (John Edward King - Christian Science Monitor )

In a category all its own...weaves inviting recipes into delightful first-person prose. [Hesser] is abundantly talented. -- John Edward King, Christian Science Monitor

Mark my words, [Hesser] is food writing's Next Big Thing, joining...M. F. K. Fisher, Ruth Reichl, [and] Laurie Colwin. (Christine Van De Velde Luskin - GENTRY )

Mark my words, [Hesser] is food writing's Next Big Thing, joining...M. F. K. Fisher, Ruth Reichl, [and] Laurie Colwin. -- Christine Van De Velde Luskin, GENTRY

Recipes, restaurant critiques, and food lore —all agreeably season New York Times food writer Hesser's beguiling story. -- Kirkus Reviews

Recipes, restaurant critiques, and food lore —all agreeably season New York Times food writer Hesser's beguiling story. (Kirkus Reviews )

Product Details

  • Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (May 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0393325598
  • ISBN-13: 978-0393325591
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #308,466 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

More About the Author

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

Visit Amazon's Amanda Hesser Page

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?


Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(5)
(1)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

 

Customer Reviews

84 Reviews
5 star:
 (31)
4 star:
 (19)
3 star:
 (10)
2 star:
 (10)
1 star:
 (14)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (84 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
39 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Foodie Barbie's Dream Book: Class Dismissed, June 25, 2003
By constantreader (San Antonio TX) - See all my reviews
The hot-pink title should be a tip-off: What might we deduce about the taste level of someone who would name a fluffy cookbook/memoir in reference to an earlier book ("Looking for Mr. Goodbar") about the murder of a lonely crippled woman?
Nonetheless, this is a physically attractive, if precious little book, with its chick-lit cover, rosy endpapers and the '50s-style line drawings that make everyone look impossibly pretty, thin, rich and happy. Like the '50s women's-magazine ads they evoke, the drawings seem to have created an alternate reality -- not quite the right tone for something that purports to be autobiography, interrupted with recipes.
I can't help comparing this book with the late Laurie Colwin's two memoir/cookbooks. Like Colwin's books, this one gives personal tips on how to cook dishes that have worked for the author, setting them in a context of entertaining family and friends through various life passages. The reason novelist Colwin's food-focused books worked for me and this one didn't, though, are the ingredients Hesser leaves out, as much as those she puts in. There's a little too much about her personal life not to have put in a little more. For instance, she hints at a class gap between her family of origins and her husband's (struggling single mom vs. college president and his hostess wife), but she won't quite go the distance and tell us how she feels about that.
There's a lot about her food-snob criticisms of her husband-to-be's eating habits, but one wonders if she ever felt any insecurity about the background gap. How she jumped the class fences would be intriguing, but she doesn't tell us how she got to train as a cook in France, nor how she got to write for the NYT while still in her 20. Either would be more interesting than her vacillations between a wedding dress from Valentino vs. one by Prada.
More fascinating are the occasional glimpses into her rather steely careerist side, and it's hard to tell if she's conscious of a rather nasty habit of biting the hand that fed her. As a young factotum for a French restaurateur, she once picked up Julia Child at Orly airport. During a drive and a lunch, she doesn't seem to have had any shop talk with one of the first American women to popularize the art of fine cooking, but shows Child as the loopy, "Saturday Night Live" caricature of herself, smiling dimwittedly at hostile French teens as the only elderly person eating at their hangout. Other food critics are kicked in the teeth for their pretensions, though it's not made clear why they are less palatable than the author's own.
There's a partial exposure of Hesser's family that reminds me of Martha Stewart's soft-focus presentation of her Polish-American family. You get the family recipes, but no sense of how these people feel, think or live their daily lives. In a particularly mean scene,"Mr. Latte" mocks the author's grandmother's npn-standard pronunciation of the word "terrible" to Hesser's apparent amusement.
I put this book down twice, but sucked up the smarminess to keep browsing through the recipes, some of which at least sound good. (Others, influenced by the gimmicky restaurants she covers, sound like a clash of too many random flavors.)I wish, though, that she had told a story worthy of her rather tough, direct style. This book -- pictures, pink and all -- is just too cute for words.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Not afraid to make mistakes, April 23, 2003
By A Customer
I enjoyed this book very much. I actually think it's better than The Cook and the Gardener for non-recipe content. Contrary to the "official" review, I did not think that the content was cutesy at all. Rather, I was glad to see Ms. Hesser admit to her faults, romantic, gourmet, and otherwise. I read the chapter about the Indian visitor entirely differently-- to me, Ms. Hesser nicely conveyed the embarrassment accompanying the gaffes and assumptions that well-meaning but realtively affluent people can sometimes make. I enjoyed Ms. Hesser's willingness to discuss how her recipes don't always come out, and thought she did a nice job discussing the ins and outs of relationships, including learning how to compromise, and learning to not be such a snob about one's personal preferences. (See the chapter on artificial sweeteners. . .) And I enjoyed her approach to cooking, since it mirrors my own "freestyle" approach.

The recipes are great, especially the "white" bolognese from the chapter about her visit to Rome. I made this recipe when it first appeared in the NYT for a dinner party, and got raves-- and promptly lost the recipe. Imagine my joy to find it here-- it made the price of the book well worth paying, even without the rest of the good recipes and enjoyable writing.

Now if she would only publish her winter fruit salad with Vanilla Syrup recipe!

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book - and the recipes are good, too!, May 1, 2003
By Susan A. Litman "Susan Litman" (Westchester, NY United States) - See all my reviews
Having cooked often from THE COOK AND THE GARDNER and enjoyed Ms. Hesser's NYT column, I was very happy to see this book. Most of the recipes sound delicious (especially the vanilla loaves and the Airplane Salad) but what I loved most is Ms. Hesser's willingness to show that she is not perfect. We see her temper tantrums when people invade her small space in the kitchen (I'm sure we can all identify) or her frustration at learning to live in shared quarters with Tad, and learning to adapt some of her habits to his. I particularly disagree with the above comment about Ms. Hesser's "gaffe" re: the price of a meal at Jean-Georges. Why not see it as a "foodie" saying what she would say to any friend or tourist who was curious about the place? A so-called "gaffe" like that could happen to anyone. Overall, this is a wonderful, charming, witty collection with some great recipes. I look forward to more from this writer!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars christmas present
I purchased this book as a Christmas gift. It was listed as a new book. But the person I gave it to just let me know that they were reading it and saw the cover page was loose... Read more
Published 2 months ago by F. Wootton

5.0 out of 5 stars 100% Perfect Conditin!
thank you for sending this to me so quickly. it was in perfect condition and i'm halfway through it. great read and i'm sure every customer you've had is satisfied like myself :)
Published 7 months ago by Laquisha Hill

2.0 out of 5 stars Not pleasant, unfortunately...
Adapted into a book from her columns, I wish there could have been more fresh writing. There is a storyline, but the plot and the insights are far too light for someone who is... Read more
Published 8 months ago by E. Manangan

5.0 out of 5 stars Clean writing & recipes
I'm no foodie, but that didn't keep me from loving this book. Hesser has a clean, effortless way of writing that's enchanting. Read more
Published 17 months ago by J. Kelley

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightful read for food lovers and lovers everywhere
Cooking for Mr. Latte traces the developing true-life romance between an obsessive foodie and her boyfriend, who takes what he puts in his mouth (and when) far less seriously... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Eager Reader

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite cookbooks
I bought this book three years ago and I never get tired of reading it. I have cooked several of the recipes and have rarely been disappointed. Read more
Published 23 months ago by E. Tracy

4.0 out of 5 stars Diary of Dreams
Cooking for Mr. Latte is the best in journal writing: meaningful, comic, and satisfying. Her recipes are strongly written because she is good at sharing. Read more
Published 24 months ago by Karen

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, light reading
If you are looking for an easy read, try Amanda Hesser's year-in-the-life. She writes of her courtship to Mr. Latte and includes lots of food talk along the way. Read more
Published on January 7, 2008 by Suzanne

1.0 out of 5 stars Horrible, Self Absorbed Little Diva
Who on earth is this chick? I couldn't imagine anything worse that eating the best food of my life with her as dinner company. She could ruin a McDonald's. Read more
Published on November 1, 2007 by Food Lover

4.0 out of 5 stars good recipes
Most people might pick this book up to reread Amanda Hesser's New York Times "Mr. Latte" columns, or because they're curious about the book's concept, but I want to first call... Read more
Published on October 5, 2007 by datura2002

Only search this product's reviews



Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   





Look for Similar Items by Category


Look for Similar Items by Subject

 

Feedback

If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.
 Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Is there any other feedback you would like to provide?

Your comments can help make our site better for everyone.


Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.