I got this book from the library--I tend to scroll through the listings of e-books available at the library and just randomly choose books that I think might be interesting--what the heck, they are free and I can always delete them with a click of the button--I don't even need to return to the library!

Anyway, I selected this book, started to read, and then realized that I had read the book once before. As I read through it for the second time, I enjoyed all the same things I enjoyed the first time through--I never realized that Iceland is actually so close to New York, and he has firmly cemented for me that I will never be able to cook lobsters.

The rest of the book is a quick and interesting read--nothing majorly fantastic, but smack dab in the center of most gastro-memoirs out there. If you like those kind of books, this one is worth a try, but, as you can see from the reviews, you may or may not enjoy it. ( )

Some very interesting recipes and a peek into how things actually work in New York ( )

Substance: Mixes memories with recipes. It is amazing the amount of minutiae this man can recollect about menus. The recipes are more ambitious than I am willing to undertake, but are undoubtedly exquisite cuisine.
Style: Chatty elitist.
NOTE: Epstein credits himself with the creation of the classic paperback industry in America, and is probably correct.
There are several interesting stories among the personal remembrances. ( )

This is a very small book, not only a thin one. But although I was thus warned that it would be brief, it was still disappointingly so. Epstein stays away from outright gossip, for which I am grateful, but I really could have used more anecdotes. Easily a third of the text is (tasty) recipes, most involving lobster. There's also a pretty creepy story about a lobster dinner. I will definitely need to try adding duck fat to a burger. There's a chapter on M.F.K. Fisher (recounting her own memoirs; he didn't meet her) that makes me both more interested and more apprehensive about finally getting around to reading her. In a completely different realm, the section on Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn and the Kennedys is fascinating, at least if it's almost all new to you like it was to me. Sadly, nothing on Nabokov, although the jacket says he knew him. Esptein was involved in the creation of trade paperbacks (which he mentions) and the Library of America (which he doesn't), so there's so much more literary ground he could cover. Not to mention his time living in Paris. I did love his repeated technique of offering a chef a cookbook contract whenever he enjoyed their food, so that he could get the recipes. He does do a wonderful job of evoking a sense (and love) of place. There is no separate recipe index. ( )