Reviews for The Meaning of Cooking

The average rating for The Meaning of Cooking based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-03-06 00:00:00 Len Gustafson I've been reading Trillin's essays for years but this is the first time I've sat down with an entire book's worth. As with many poetry collections, I sat down expecting to browse through a small selection of pieces at a time but then suddenly I'd finished it. Although everything was written in the 70s, remarkably little is dated. Many foodie trends have, in fact, cycled back around. My copy is a first edition hardcover. It cost about $2 and likely always will but the yellowing pages and dated dustjacket font added nicely to what nostalgia there was. Besides the food, the fun of reading Trillin is in the humor, the kind that provides a chuckle on nearly every page, far too frequently to quote. It's the same sort of humor as Nora Ephron's, but less political and more prolific. I did get a little green about their apparently unlimited travel and leisure budget, though. And I kept wanting to tell Alice to just go sightsee without him rather than always missing out on a museum in favor of a restaurant. The more about food you've read, the more rewarding this collection is. My favorite part was encountering Shopsin's when it was still just a grocery and mentioned under a different name. Trillin also describes a restaurant in Reading PA called simply Joe's, whose award-winning cookbook I bought (new) 20 years later. It's not an entirely fun book. Alice Trillin comes across so vividly as such an interesting, clever, and just plain nice person that her relatively early death (in 2001) casts a melancholy light on many passages. On the plus side, this is the second of a trilogy. And I would love another helping.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-06-12 00:00:00 Joseph Abruzzo I did not make it through all the essays here, because I felt like they all started to sound the same. I say that of many essay collections or short story collections, and neither format is usually designed to be read cover-to-cover. That being said, I do like Trillin, and enjoy his columns in the New Yorker. He's charming, funny. I'd like to be seated next to him at any number of dinners. His essays make me chuckle, and capture a slice of life when American food culture suddenly went beyond regional specialties or meat-and-potatoes. Before "food writing" was a genre, Trillin wrote about food, and more importantly, how food seemed to be such a joyful bond between him and his wife Alice. It's so joyful it almost feels quaint, but it also makes me remember why I like a lot of food writing in the first place. (Just, like many dishes, not all at once.)