Where Shall We Go For Dinner? Book

The jacket for Tamasin Day-Lewis’ Were Shall We Go for Dinner? is simplicity itself: a plain, off-white matt sleeve with a simple line drawing of a plate, knife and fork and the strapline ‘A food romance’. And that is exactly what this is. The author's relationship to the meals here goes beyond simple culinary judgments into the realms of the sensuous: food is described with a poetic intensity that would put Coleridge or Wordsworth to shame. And it is not just the fare in the various restaurants that Day-Lewis conjures up for us on her romantic Italian journey, but the experience of travelling to the restaurants themselves: for instance, meandering back along the Grand Canal, we stop off at the Gelateria San Giorgio on the Via Garibaldi and get talking to the owner, another Giorgio, and are quite unable to pick a flavour from the stupendously good-looking ice creams which he makes in a tiny room in the back of the little shop. In fact, the whole book is a delirious trip through the many and varied byways of Italian food and cooking, but it isn't all enthusiasm (‘Here we are in Puglia and our first degustiazione is some tiredly, oh so deeply fried battered vegetables and unidentifiable fishy things, the tepid oil seeping into our fingers.’) Mostly, however, this is a book to fill us full of envy for the tempting eleven-course adventure described in this memoir/love story with Tamasin Day-Lewis and her American boyfriend travelling through Italy to indulge in some amazing food. And envy is just what such celebrities as Richard Grant and Michael Palin have felt for the experiences in the book -- but they still been happy to lend their recommendations to it. --Barry ForshawRead More