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

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? Recipient of three James Beard awards, Anya von Bremzen has written definitive cookbooks on Russian, Spanish, and Latin American cuisines, as well as her internationally acclaimed memoir Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking. Now in National Dish, she sets out to investigate 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 scholars to strangers in bars, in search of how cuisine became connected to place and identity.

Paris is where the whole idea of food as national heritage was first invented, and so it is where Anya must begin. With an inquisitive eye and unmistakable wit, she ponders the codification of French food and the current tension between locavorism and globalization. From France, she's off to Naples, to probe the myth and reality of pizza, pasta, and Italian-ness. Next up, Tokyo, where Anya and her partner Barry explore ramen, rice, and the distance between Japan's future and its past. From there they move to Seville, to search for the community-based essence of Spain's tapas traditions, and then Oaxaca, where debates over postcolonial cultural integration find expression in maize and mole. In Istanbul, a traditional Ottoman potluck becomes a lens on how a former multicultural empire defines its food heritage. Finally, they land back in their beloved home in Queens, for a dinner centered on Ukrainian borsch, a meal that has never felt more loaded, or more precious and poignant.

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.

Author: Anya Von Bremzen
Publisher: Penguin Press
Published: 06/20/2023
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.20w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780735223165

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 01/01/2023 pg. 17
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2023
Publishers Weekly 05/01/2023
Booklist 05/15/2023 pg. 7

About the Author
Anya von Bremzen is one of the most accomplished food writers of her generation: the winner of three James Beard awards; a contributing writer at AFAR magazine; and the author of six acclaimed cookbooks, among them The New Spanish Table, The Greatest Dishes: Around the World in 80 Recipes, and Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook (coauthored by John Welchman). Her memoir, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking has been translated into nineteen languages. Anya has written for Food & Wine, Saveur, the New Yorker, and Foreign Policy magazines among other publications. A former concert pianist, Anya is fluent in four languages and when not on the road divides her time between New York and Istanbul.