[A] sensory-driven, historical deep dive ... Whereas the current culinary landscape is a melting pot, she reduces it to stock, food capital by food capital, and often enchantingly so, toggling between ethnography and critique as she leaves Jackson Heights to travel and taste the world ... Vivid ... A sometimes intimidatingly evocative, gorgeously layered exercise in place-making and cultural exploration, nuanced and rich as any of the dishes captured within.
A fast-paced, entertaining travelogue, peppered with compact history lessons that reveal the surprising ways dishes become iconic ... The reader might grow antsy ... National Dish begins with the connection between food and place, but it is ultimately about the intimate, transitory communities people make when they eat together.
The exploration of a dish is the exploration of place, as Von Bremzen weaves her conversations into vivid descriptions from her immersive stays in Paris, Naples, Tokyo, Oaxaca, Seville, and Istanbul ... Bremzen’s prose meanders through each city, introducing a whirlwind of people, new vocabulary, and frequent, flowery prose that can make it hard to follow the original story thread. However, for readers who appreciate a sensorial journey and eschew arriving at easy conclusions, this will hit the spot.
