Eating in Italy: A Traveler's Guide to the Hidden Gastronomic Pleasures of Northern Italy (Paperback)

~ Faith H. Willinger (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Grab this book and your forchetta (fork) and head to Italy for a tantalizing tour of tastes. Faith Heller Willinger is an American living in Italy who has devoted her taste buds to sampling and reporting on the best Italian kitchens have to offer. If you think Italian food equals pizza and spaghetti, the variety of offerings found in the 11 northern regions explored in this book will astound you. Each regional section begins with helpful explanations of Italian dishes from local menus. Next, the wine and food specialties are temptingly presented with interesting tidbits about production methods and historical origins. For example, grissini, yard-long breadsticks of the Piemonte region, were first made in 1668, when "the Savoia court doctor, Don Baldo Pecchio, had the court baker whip up some crunchy, thin and easily digestible breadsticks for the sickly Prince Vittorio Amadeo II, who suffered from 'intestinal fevers.'" Each section is finished off with a listing of restaurants and inns, organized by city. If you aren't sated yet, Eating in Italy also provides gelato flavors, a key to Italian opening and closing hours, types of pasta, wine terminology, and a food glossary.

From Library Journal

Willinger, an American who lives in Italy, celebrates some of the world's best food in this gastronomic tour of the 11 regions that make up northern Italy. For each region, she begins with a pithy explanation of the best local dishes and food specialties, and the best regional wines and their producers. Then, listed by city or town, she recommends hotels and inns, restaurants of many types and sizes, and all kinds of markets and shops that sell food, wine, and housewares. Major cities get major attention, but this book is perhaps most valuable for its tips about dozens of smaller places, many of them well off the usual tourist beat. A gem of a travel guide, highly recommended.
- Ruth Diebold, M.L.S., Upper Nyack, N.Y.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks; Rev Upd edition (February 18, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688146147
• ISBN-13: 978-0688146146
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #636,509 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars invaluable, infuriating, June 2, 1999

By A Customer

I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, during a recent trip to Tuscany I found it invaluable. The recommendations are spot on, the descriptions are accurate, and the advice is excellent. If Willinger describes a restaurant as a good, traditional trattoria, that's what it is; if it's a bakery with a particular specialty, that specialty is worth a taste. She steered us to one of the best restaurant meals I've ever eaten (at Viccolo del Contento, in Castelfranco di Sopra). We never would have known about it without her. (There was one recommendation we disagreed with: Cibreo, in Florence. But practically every guidebook recommends it highly, so either we had an atypical experience there or it's gone downhill.)

On the other hand, the book is so badly organized that trying to use it is extraordinarily frustrating. The section on Florence, for example, is a hodgepodge -- restaurants, bakeries, shops, etc. *seem* to be arranged by category (except when they aren't), and alphabetically within each category (except when they aren't). Since there's no map of the city, and only vague mentions of where things are, to find places you have to match the address to a map from some other source. (I finally got out my guidebook map and went through the entire Florence section, marking the entries of places that were near where we were staying.)

The book also contains frustrating lapses. There are generally no directions or only minimal information on where things are. The "Pitti Gola e Cantina" in Florence is wrongly named (as "Pitti Libri e Gola") and is listed simply as being in the Piazza Pitti -- no street address. We would have had a hard time finding it if we hadn't had another guidebook that gave the correct name and address. And in small towns, you generally have to ask for directions from the locals, otherwise you'll never find where you're going. (That's what we had to do for Viccolo del Contento.)

Note the subtitle: this book only covers Northern Italy.

My advice: if you're going to Northern Italy, buy this book, but make sure that you look through it carefully before you go so that you know more or less what to look for when you get there. Otherwise, you'll be constantly frustrated.

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Food and Wine Book I've Ever Found!, February 26, 2000

By A Customer

This is the best and most consistent travel book I have ever found. We are going to France this summer and I can't bear planning the trip without F. Willinger's help. I am in the wine business and my other half is a chef, we are very hard to please when it comes to eating and drinking. In three weeks, we did not find one restaurant recommendation that was not right on the money and superb. There were even fantastic and unusual regional wine suggestions. Not only was the food and wine information terrific, but the descriptions of the owners and the restaurants' atmospheres were perfect. I give this book to all my friends who are planning a trip to Northern Italy. I only wish that F. Willinger would write about other countries and regions. I spent hours enjoying the book before we left. Never has planning a trip been so much fun. Don't go to Northern Italy with it!

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Gastronomic Guide to Northern Italy, July 26, 1999

By	Dr. Aeyal M. Gross (Tel-Aviv ISRAEL) - See all my reviews

When I arrived in Florence in June 1998, I did not even know the name Faith Heller Willinger.I came across the book Eating in Italy by chance while visiting a bookstore. It looked promising enough and I bought it. For the rest of my month in Northern Italy, this book became an essential guide. How else would I have known which gelato is the best in Venice? Which restaruant is really a must when you visit Sirmione in the lake district ? My secret for discovering Italy's best food was in following this book, both its "do's" and its "don'ts". When I failed to follow a "don't", I came to regret it. Having the book with us in the car was essential in making this visit a gastronomic experience. My only regret was that in the concluding part of the trip, in Rome, I didn't have Faith Willinger with me (the book only covers Northern Italy). By now I also own Willinger's cookbook (Red, White and Greens), and folllow her food columns on the Internet. She is for sure a great resource for enjoying the fabolus food of Italy.