Friday, July 17, 2009

Review-Where Shall We Go For Dinner? by Tamasin Day-Lewis

While reading Where Shall We Go For Dinner, the thought "What a bitch!" crossed my mind several times. To me, Day-Lewis is the worst kind of foodie. She's a snob. She holds each experience up to a previous experience. This peach cannot be as good as the peach I had 7 years ago. These jams can't stand up to jams in England. Rather than facing each experience fresh and judging each on its own merits, she insists on comparing. I found the constant comparisons irritating. If I had to travel with her, I would quickly lose her or book a trip home.
I also did not care for her constant name dropping-Kinsley Ames and Julia Roberts just a couple she mentions. I've never heard of Tamasin Day-Lewis before picking up this book, but I understand that she's written numerous cookbooks. Also she's the daughter of a famous poet, Cecil Day-Lewis. So she lived her life surrounded by famous people. I've seen people name drop with more grace than Day-Lewis.
The one saving grace was passages like this:
"It's primrose pale, so crisp it shatters in the mouth once its hermetic seal is broken and the instensfied flavours within are released to flood onto the tonuge in a whoosh of perfect contrast: creaminess, spring softness, milkness with a lactic twinge."
Does it make you want to eat? The description was about stuffed courgette flowers with fresh ricotta and buffalo mozzarella. There were descriptions like that made my mouth water. That was really the only good reason to read this book. I did learn about new foods and I am excited to try new cheeses and Puglian olive oil. So if you enjoy her writing or her cookbooks (there were a couple of recipes at the end of each chapter) then I suggest picking it up.

3 comments:

  1. Some foodie snobs I'll just never understand. You spend your lives getting to enjoy good food but you can't really even enjoy it. Instead you have to show just how wonderful and special you are by poo-pooing everything.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This review makes me curious- I'm going to have to pick up the book now!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'll continue to live vicariously through you in regards to this book. I'm looking forward to seeing the ones you decide to make!!

    ReplyDelete

Shiny! I love comments.