National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home - Anya Von Bremzen

Named a Best Book of 2023 by Financial Times , The Guardian , and BBC's The Food Programme In this engrossing and timely journey to the crossroads of food and identity, award-winning writer Anya von Bremzen explores six of the world's most fascinating and iconic culinary cultures--France, Italy, Japan, Spain, Mexico, and Turkey--brilliantly weaving cuisine, history, and politics into a work of scintillating connoisseurship and charm We all have an idea in our heads about what French food is--or Italian, or Japanese, or Mexican, or . . . But where did those ideas come from? Who decides what makes a national food canon? Anya von Bremzen has won three James Beard Awards and written several definitive cookbooks, as well as her internationally acclaimed memoir Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking . In National Dish , she investigates the truth behind the eternal cliché--we are what we eat--traveling to six storied food capitals, going high and low, from world-famous chefs to culinary scholars to strangers in bars, in search of how cuisine became connected to place and identity. A unique and magical cook's tour of the world, National Dish brings us to a deep appreciation of how the country makes the food, and the food the country.