Eatdrink #54 July/August 2015

№ 54 | July/August 2015 www.eatdrink.ca 61
Seeds are the heart of the story.
Lloyd’s farm and Momoko’s
garden have thousands of rare
seeds, some of them the last
specimens of their kind on Earth.
They have been quietly nurturing,
preserving, and distributing
these natural treasures that might
have gone extinct if not for their
efforts. GMO plants can take over
natural varieties, causing them
to die out, but the activists and
In Ruth Reichl’s book, Delicious! (2014),
Billie Breslin finds herself in the midst of the
New York food scene, learning everything
she can from the cheese makers, butchers,
chocolatiers, and food magazine
editors she finds herself mingling
with in her new job. Billie was a
culinary prodigy who started a
cake business with her sister at
a young age, and seems to have
quite a tongue for flavour. The
story is infused with flavours and
aromas that only a true gourmand
and long-time restaurant critic,
like Reichl, can relay. Billie fits
right into the foodie lifestyle by
visiting local farms, hunting for
her own mushrooms, serving
real Italian cheeses at a deli, all the while
chiselling out a career as a food writer at an
The food items paired together in Bread
and Butter (2014) by Michelle Wildgen refer
to the living that three brothers
make in the restaurant business
in their Pennsylvania hometown.
The older two, Leo and Britt, are
veterans in the industry with their
joint restaurant, Winesap; they
are supportive, but skeptical, of
younger Harry opening up Stray
in their small town. Working in
tandem, the older brothers have
their respective duties: Britt
learns the dining preferences and
aversions of regular customers at
the front of house; Leo manages
the kitchen crew. They’ve been in business
long enough to know the rhythm of the
kitchen and the flow of service which
Wildgen describes in entertaining detail.
Compared to his brothers, who opened
their restaurant after years of hard work,
farmers come together to propel
their anti-corporate sentiments
throughout the farming
community. Ozeki’s compelling
story is equally about political
and agribusiness issues, and
personal relationships and the
dramas that they spawn. An
apocalyptic, yet touching, climax
pays tribute to the importance of
humans standing up for nature.
upscale food magazine called Delicious!
In the magazine’s office, Billie unearths a
secret stash of mysterious correspondence
originally written to James Beard. The letters
were written during World War
II, by a young girl who is very
mature and astute in her societal
observations; her writing about
wartime food conditions and
rationing juxtaposes the gourmet
world of Delicious! The letters give
a taste of what wartime cooking
was like, conveying that even
though U.S. citizens needed to
sacrifice certain food choices,
it did not stop them from being
creative in the kitchen. Billie
becomes engrossed in reading
and cataloguing the letters and her new project
shrouds other problems in her family life.
Harry is an adventurous experimenter
in the kitchen who sets out to bring new
perspectives of artisanal food
creations to the sheltered
scene of their hometown. Britt
is jealous of Harry’s ease and
randomness at moving into the
business, but the three brothers
share a love of the food industry.
Wildgen writes with an eye
for flavours that her readers
can savour through words,
and she expertly portrays the
competitive and frantic lives of
restaurateurs and chefs, coupled
with a dash of sibling rivalry and
off-duty romance outside the kitchen.
DARIN COOK is a freelance writer who lives and works in
Chatham-Kent, but keeps himself well-read and well-fed by
visiting the bookstores and restaurants on London.