The Book of Eating: Adventures in Professional Gluttony

by Adam Platt

Overview

From New York magazine’s award-winning restaurant critic, “a timely and delectable smorgasbord of dishes and dishing . . . honest, revealing and funny.” —New York Times Book Review

A wildly hilarious and irreverent memoir of a globe-trotting life lived meal-to-meal by one of our most influential and respected food critics

As the son of a diplomat growing up in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, Adam Platt didn’t have the chance to become a picky eater. Living, traveling, and eating in some of the most far-flung locations around the world, he developed an eclectic palate and a nuanced understanding of cultures and cuisines that led to some revelations which would prove important in his future career as a food critic. In Tokyo, for instance—“a kind of paradise for nose-to-tail cooking”—he learned that “if you’re interested in telling a story, a hair-raisingly bad meal is much better than a good one.”

From dim sum in Hong Kong to giant platters of Peking duck in Beijing, fresh-baked croissants in Paris and pierogi on the snowy streets of Moscow, Platt takes us around the world, re-tracing the steps of a unique, and lifelong, culinary education. Providing a glimpse into a life that has intertwined food and travel in exciting and unexpected ways, The Book of Eating is a delightful and sumptuous trip that is also the culinary coming-of-age of a voracious eater and his eventual ascension to become, as he puts it, “a professional glutton.”

“A scarfable recounting of his travels, told through meals.” —Food52

“Gastronomes and fans of Platt will savor this behind-the-scenes look at real life as a restaurant critic.” —Publishers Weekly

“A candid, entertaining look at an often bizarre new gustatory landscape.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Entertaining.” —Booklist

“A delicious peek behind the scenes of a storied career.” —BookPage, starred review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062293565
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	12/15/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	265
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Adam Platt has been a contributing editor and restaurant critic for New York magazine since 2000. He won the James Beard Foundation Journalism Award for Restaurant Reviews in 2010. During the course of nearly twenty-five years in the magazine business, Platt has written for a variety of publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Observer, Esquire, and Condé Nast Traveler. He lives in Greenwich Village with his wife and two pizza-loving daughters.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

1 Lunch with Gael 1

2 Eating with My Father 19

3 Eating with My Mother 39

4 Eating with My Brothers 57

5 After Leaving China: Japan 75

6 The Birth of a Critic, Part 1 87

7 The Birth of a Critic, Part 2 105

8 Eating With My Family 111

9 The Showdown at ZZ's Clam Bar 123

10 "Adam Platt is a Miserable Fuck," Part 1 133

11 "Adam Platt is a Miserable Fuck," Part 2 143

12 Travels, Part 1 151

13 Travels, Part 2 161

14 Meditations on Dieting as a Restaurant Critic and Other Ridiculous Pipe Dreams 175

15 Further Meditations on Dieting 183

16 Meditations on Dieting, Final Thoughts 191

17 The Best Job of the Twentieth Century, Part 1 201

18 The Best Job of the Twentieth Century, Part 2 215

19 Faking It: The Imperfect Art of the Perfect Review, Part 1 225

20 The Imperfect Art of the Perfect Review, Part 2 235

21 End of Days 243

Editorial Reviews

11/01/2019

Platt is a former travel writer and current contributing editor and restaurant critic for New York magazine and its food blog, Grub Street. In his first book, Platt builds on his New York pieces, offering new insights into the world of New York City dining, the changing state of food culture, and his family. Musing on his early career as a restaurant critic, Platt provides a glimpse into foodie culture before it became mainstream. Interwoven with these professional experiences are personal stories about being the son of a diplomat and father to two adopted daughters. Platt also shares his mostly unsuccessful forays into dieting and trying to lose weight, a challenge for someone in his line of work. Throughout, Platt comes across as someone with a deep respect for good food and the people who make it. VERDICT Recommended for readers interested in the changing roles of food critics and the evolving nature of food writing in the digital age.—Meagan Storey, Virginia Beach

Library Journal

The best thing about Platt's new memoir…is the way he dispenses with pretense in general. He does not pretend, even though he knows a great deal, to be a super-foodie. He's maniacally self-deprecating. He serves good stories because he doesn't over-batter them.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

08/19/2019

James Beard Award–winning New York Magazine restaurant critic Platt shares his culinary adventures in this spirited memoir. Platt begins with his formative years moving around Asia with a diplomat father. As a child, Platt and his family spent years in Taiwan eating “sizzling meal of fried rice” with “sweet fatty slivers of ‘La Chang’ sausage” prepared by their hired chef. In Hong Kong, he enjoyed “chunks of fatty pork belly,” while in Tokyo he devoured onigiri, yakitori, and more. Later, after starting work in food media, failed diets and gout plague the critic, who shares memorable foibles, such as the time he was recognized in his oversize coat (the “giant, flapping undertaker’s garment” he wore while sampling restaurants) and another time was bounced from ZZ’s Clam Bar by an unwelcoming staff. As a member of the culinary old guard, Platt displays some self-deprecating wit (he reckons with the internet’s influence on a rapidly changing dining landscape and joins Twitter as “Plattypants”), yet he comes across as out-of-touch at times (Asian cuisine is “exotic” or “bizarre” rather than just unfamiliar, for example). Nevertheless, gastronomes and fans of Platt will savor this behind-the-scenes look at real life as a restaurant critic in the big city. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Gastronomes and fans of Platt will savor this behind-the-scenes look at real life as a restaurant critic in the big city.” — Publishers Weekly

“A candid, entertaining look at an often bizarre new gustatory landscape.” — Kirkus Reviews

“...[An] entertaining and honest account of restaurant journalism, and a life worth exploring.” — Booklist

“A timely and delectable smorgasbord of dishes and dishing…this honest, revealing and funny book is as deeply pleasurable as the soup dumplings Platt learned to love as a boy.” — New York Times Book Review

"Longtime New York magazine restaurant critic Adam Platt offers a delicious peek behind the scenes of a storied career...Platt delivers a generous, hilarious case for the restaurant critic’s enduring significance." — BookPage (starred review)

From the Publisher

"Longtime New York magazine restaurant critic Adam Platt offers a delicious peek behind the scenes of a storied career...Platt delivers a generous, hilarious case for the restaurant critic’s enduring significance."

BookPage (starred review)

...[An] entertaining and honest account of restaurant journalism, and a life worth exploring.

Booklist

A timely and delectable smorgasbord of dishes and dishing…this honest, revealing and funny book is as deeply pleasurable as the soup dumplings Platt learned to love as a boy.

New York Times Book Review

...[An] entertaining and honest account of restaurant journalism, and a life worth exploring.

Booklist

2019-08-19
A memoir of a life in food that is as much a reminiscence of family and travel as a discursive account of 20 years of culinary trends and developments.

In the summer of 2000, Platt succeeded Gael Greene as restaurant critic of New York magazine, well aware of the haughty, slightly absurd image the food critic held in the public imagination. The former travel writer was nonetheless a natural "gastronaut." The son of a career diplomat, Platt and his brothers had grown up at various posts, chiefly in Asia, with stopovers in his native New York as well as Washington, D.C. The Platt family dove into each food world with the gusto of omnivorous feeders. Platt learned early on how to escape the expatriate cocoon and dive into a culture. Little has changed: "I've always equated the glamor of travel and living in far-off lands with the eternal joys of a good meal." The author fell in love with the theatrical pageantry of restaurants, and he would come to see a critique as "part cultural essay, part personal diary, part service journalism, and part travel and cultural commentary." A James Beard Award winner, Platt writes that the strange Kabuki world of the restaurant critic, a once-rarefied realm, has given way—for good and ill—to the democratizing influences of social media and internet culture, which he chronicles with some distaste (and grudging appreciation). The self-styled "Grumpy Adam" can be as admiring as he is dyspeptic, but his disquisitions on the art and practice of criticism sometimes slip into excessive self-deprecation. Still, his tone is comradely, offering not only an elegy for a vanished golden era of New York cuisine and the traditional expense-account food junket, but also a lament over the disappearance of so many gifted old-school critics, many of whom have been replaced by manic bloggers.

A candid, entertaining look at an often bizarre new gustatory landscape.

Kirkus Reviews