The United States of Arugula : how we became a gourmet nation - Kamp, David
Summary: A compilation of essays goes inside the American food revolution to explore the growing interest in gourmet eating, chronicling the evolution of the movement and profiling those responsible for the transformation. - (Baker & Taylor)
Booklist Reviews
It seemed in the late 1950s that Americans were hopelessly wed to time-saving, nutritionally suspect food whose chief virtue was its ability to provide instant gratification of the most untutored senses. Then along came, in close succession, an imperious French chef, a couple of gay men, and a remarkably tall, surprisingly telegenic woman. They formed a vanguard for battalions of cookbook writers, restaurant owners, chefs, food critics, grocers, and television producers and personalities who brought the principles of fine food to increasingly sophisticated masses with plenty of discretionary income to indulge themselves. With pronounced and definite opinion, Kamp retells the culinary saga of these revolutionary times. His accounts of these pioneers of taste explain the contributions of each, and he regales the reader with gossipy anecdotes that belie the public faces with which these "authorities" sometimes masked their appetites for sex, drugs, celebrity, and money. Kamp's recounting of the rise of California cuisine--epitomized by Alice Waters and her Berkeley circle--aptly summarizes the era's glories and excesses. ((Reviewed August 2006)) Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews.
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