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Bezig met laden... Blue Trout and Black Truffles: The Peregrinations of an Epicuredoor Joseph Wechsberg
Food Memoirs (54) Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. I'm a sucker for books like these: food, another time and place (Czechoslovakia, Vienna...)...and Wechsberg has many. My favorites are his memoir/food books--but he also wrote many books about music, and one on banking. ( ) This was a lively and entertaining look at two worlds that no longer exist, from the perspective of food and gourmet meals. The first part, which I found more enjoyable, shows Wechsberg's childhood in Moravia (a Czech-speaking part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) before and in the years after the first world war, and his life as a young man in Prague, Paris, and Vienna and as a traveling musician on ocean liners in the 1920s. This part was inherently more interesting for me, partly because I've read a lot of central European fiction more or less from this time period or slightly earlier, and also told more of a story. Also, there were lots of fascinating tidbits, like the 20 or so different cuts of boiled beef in Vienna, and the exploits of the women who frequented Maxim's in Paris in the 1890s. The second part, which reads more like a collection of magazine articles (and probably was, since some of the chapters were published in a variety of US magazines) takes the reader on trips to French restaurants, truffle-gathering communities, and wine chateaus in the early 1950s. I found this moderately interesting in itself and as a portrait of a a way of life that, 50+ years later, seems almost as remote to us as the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire must have seemed to Wechsberg when he wrote this book in 1953. One of the most remarkable things about this book is Wechsberg's wonderful, lively, and humorous writing, because English is at least his fourth language (after Czech, German, and French) and he only learned it on coming to the US in 1938.
There were, and still are, great restaurants all over Europe, but the greater part of Blue Trout and Black Truffles is devoted to the eatingplaces and vineyards of France. It is a vicarious experience to read about the culinary wonders of the notable establishments of another era that have become the last epicurean haven in this materialistic, mechanized world of fastfood chains and frozenfood dinners. Mr. Wechsberg reaches back to the twilight days of the Habsburg monarchy, when those splendid monuments to the haute cuisine in central Europe, Meissl and Schadn of Vienna and Gundel's of Budapest, were in their prime. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)647.9544Technology Home and family management Hospitality (Restaurants, Hotels) and Property Management Restaurants and Hotels Restaurants Restaurants in Europe France & MonacoLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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