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The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten
Title: The Man Who Ate EverythingAuthor: Jeffrey Steingarten
Genre: Non-fiction, essays
Rating: 1.5/5
# pages: 384
Date read: June, 2011
When Jeffrey Steingarten was made food critic of Vogue in 1989, he began by systematically learning to like all the food he had previously avoided. From clams to Greek food to Indian desserts with the consistency of face cream, Steingarten undertook an extraordinary program of self-inflicted behavior modification to prepare himself for his new career. He describes the experience in this collection's first piece, before setting out on a series of culinary adventures that take him around the world.
It's clear that Vogue gave Steingarten carte blanche to write on whatever subjects tickled his taste buds, and the result is a frequently hilarious collection of essays that emphasize good eating over an obsession with health. "Salad, the Silent Killer" is a catalog of the toxins lurking in every bowl of raw vegetables, while "Fries" follows a heroic attempt to create the perfect French fry--cooked in horse fat.
As the rating indicates, this is definitely a book to miss... the mere fact that I've been reading it for more than 6 months should be proof of that!
The book blurb - as well as the title itself - led me to believe that it would be a collection of essays about Jeffrey Steingarten eating weird things. I thought that sounded interesting, so when the library didn't have the book, I went out and bought it, even though I'd thought his other essay collection only so-so. And it did start out exploring just that, and was really interesting! Mostly to see which of Jeffrey's "will never eat!" I agreed with, and which I loved.
Unfortunately this part of the book was over much too quickly - in fact, it was only the preface to the book. The rest was much the same as "It Must Have Been Something I Ate" - essays about assorted odds and ends about cooking and culinary oddities - but unfortunately not nearly as interesting.
So give this one a miss, and pick up "IMHBSIA" instead if you really want to read Jeffrey Steingarten.
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