Book description
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.
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. Her memoir, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, has been translated into nineteen languages. Anya has been a contributing editor at Travel+Leisure and Food & Wine, and has written for Saveur, The New Yorker, and Foreign Policy, among other publications.
