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

~ Amanda Hesser (Author)

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 )

See all Editorial 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)

Customer Reviews

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

This review is from: Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover's Courtship, with Recipes (Hardcover)

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.

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

This review is from: Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover's Courtship, with Recipes (Hardcover)

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!

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

This review is from: Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover's Courtship, with Recipes (Hardcover)

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!