Chewing the Fat

Pick it up: If you enjoy food writing, if you like reading essays, if you want to read a thoughtful, engaging, and often funny take on a variety of topics surrounding food and cooking.

Jay Rayner is a British restaurant critic and food writer. This book is a collection of pieces that he’s written over the years for the Observer Food Monthly, for a column titled ‘The Happy Eater’. That is an apt title because that is who Rayner is. He loves food, cooking makes him happy, and eating makes him happier.

He writes about a variety of topics in this book – the pleasures of sometimes eating alone while people-watching at a restaurant, dishes that you must never order at a restaurant because they are much better made at home, why some dishes and meals stay in our memories while others don’t, his dislike of picnics and picnic food, his inability to ever get up from a table without wearing his food (at least some of it on his shirt), the pleasure of cooking alongside a friend, his tendency to be a control freak in the kitchen and so on.

He writes also about Christmas cooking, the needless pressure that people put on themselves to make the perfect Christmas meal, and his personal strategy of sequestering himself in the kitchen for the first half of the day, doing what he thoroughly enjoys, while avoiding at least some of the stress that comes with gathering the whole family under one roof.

This is a charming collection of essays that is as funny as it is insightful.