MixedLos Angeles Review of BooksDunlop’s book, polemical in parts, is a robust defense of Chinese food mounted by one of its leading authorities in the West ... Dunlop’s book will resonate with all who see themselves as explicators of the country to foreign audiences ... But...lack of self-awareness is a recurrent problem ... As understandable as it is for Dunlop to want to defend Chinese food against its critics, her eagerness to assert its superiority over other cuisines nonetheless prevents her book from doing what the best histories of China do, which is speak to its present ... Dunlop, eager to counter negative narratives about Chinese food, presents positive ones without noticing that they too are generalizations that play into the same reductionist game.
