Good Eats: Adam Gopnik writes, reads and eats well in 'The Table Comes First'
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From the cover of "The Table Comes First" -
Adam Gopnik
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In "The Table Comes First," a muse on the meaning and relativity of taste, Francophile Adam Gopnik wanders between 17th-century pre-Revolutionary Paris and Manhattan.
He reviews for us how the French invented the restaurant, codified modern Western cooking and defined the rules of dining out, birthing the restaurant industry as it is today. (Of course, these massive structures of custom mired French cuisine, hindering growth while Spain and now Scandinavia re-wrote what it is to be avant garde.)
We are introduced to the new vanguard and their efforts to redefine "taste" and "food" through technology, localism, seasonality and re-imagined integration of our other senses. In an effort to personalize these developments in the world of haute cuisine, we are treated to a series of fictional e-mails from the author to Elizabeth Pennell, an "eerily modern" Anglo-American from the late 1800s who "was the first to see the cookbook as a literary form." Mr. Gopnik peppers her with queries and confessions about cooking for his family and friends.
As I worked through this book, I vacillated between fascination and frustration. The description of the rise of the restaurant due to entwined evolution of city centers, modern liberal thought, and cafe society captivated me, keeping me reading long after sense and responsibility deemed prudent.
Knopf ($25.95)
The ease with which he summarized the phenomenon of Copenhagen's Rene Redzepi -- the marriage of extreme seasonal/localism and applied modern food technology wrapped in the luxurious fetishisms of price and locale -- was brilliant. Reading that passage galvanized my own nascent notions of the future of cooking and food.
However, repeated dashes to Wikipedia to keep up with the manifold players slowed me down, making me wish I were reading this as an e-book with a click-through for every German philosopher neglected by my freshman philosophy course.
I must also admit to my stark jealousy of what I perceive to be the reality of Mr. Gopnik's life: tranquilly cooking complex and delicious meals that his children (unlike my own) appreciate and devour, long discussions with beautiful French food writers in Paris cafes (multiple young beautiful French food writers), perusal of his incredible personal food book library on oak shelves in his vast New York City loft, and the ease with which he tosses off the word "Veblenian." This may color my review. A little.
First Published November 6, 2011 12:00 am
