hungry?

I've never believed that food writing is any more of an art than eating and cooking, and that to try to elevate the craft to the exalted level of serious literature, music and painting is a naive attempt by dreamers to transform a quite ordinary discipline into a complex process by which true masterpieces are produced.

- James Villas, Between Bites

I like the way Villas is unabashedly unapologetic for the food writer he is.
He is honest and essentially no-nonsense about his food.

Much to the nervous horror of my peers, I refuse to drink wine at cocktail parties. I smoke, I spurn salsas, sushi and the food processor, and at table I much prefer the company of an expert pig breeder or hungry whiskey distiller to that of a fatuous foodie waxing ecstatically about Peruvian peppers or some young hotshot chef's latest fusion concoctions. I do not show up at ceremonial dinners to claim my occasional awards and schmooze; I consider it unfair and immoral to review a restaurant that's been in the business less than three months.

Villas, the former food and wine editor of Town and Country and contributor to Esquire and Gourmet, was not a chef to start with. He was an academic who somehow fell into the role of food writer.

He writes of meeting MFK Fisher for an interview at her home in Sonoma, where he ends up throwing up in her bathroom - food poisoning from his dinner the night before.
And instead of feasting on the lunch of prawns, plum tomatoes and zucchini tobbed with mild chillies which she had prepared, he sups on milk toast and Coca-Cola, because as she explains "There's no palliative like milk toast and Coke, and you'll have your strength back in no time."

And with many food books, this comes with recipes, like Bananas Foster, QE2 caviar pie, and milk toast, of course.

I would buy the book just for the opening chapter and the closing ones. Everything else in between is hardly arbitrary though. Highly entertaining rather.

No wonder that he was named best food writer at Bon Appètit’s sixth annual American Food & Entertaining Awards last year. Although I doubt he actually showed up to collect his prize.

James Villas
Between Bites: Memoirs Of A Hungry Hedonist