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A review by mcmoots
The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine by Steven Rinella
3.0
Field and Stream meets Julie and Julia. Rinella sets himself a goal of hunting and fishing for the ingredients of a grand feast based on Escoffier's Guide Cuilinaire; the book is the story of his outdoor excursions, and his encounters with assorted folks who have devoted their lives to the pursuit of sparrow-trapping, eel-smoking, or subsistence fishing. The actual cooking given short shrift, which is disappointing, but probably for the best in terms of the overall length and flow of the book.
Rinella skillfully weaves his chapters together with a couple of ongoing threads of conflict: Will he ever get a squab? Will his vegetarian girlfriend become a meat-eater? Since the last couple of memoirs I've read suffered from the lack of large-scale narrative arc, it was a relief to be reminded that you can write this kind of book as a book, rather than as an essay collection. The pigeon-hunting and pigeon-raising stories were great.
The girlfriend stuff, though... Rinella might be a skilled writer but I have no idea what his girlfriend saw in him; whenever he talks about their relationship, or her vegetarianism, or his ceaseless meat-related wheedling and manipulation, he comes off as a total jerk. Actually, whenever he writes about women, he comes off as a jerk - he frequently introduces female characters with a paean to their physical appearance and then moves to a discussion of how silly it is when they talk. In a book devoted to detailed discussions of historical butchering practices, I had to get my gross-outs from sexism? Bleah.
Rinella skillfully weaves his chapters together with a couple of ongoing threads of conflict: Will he ever get a squab? Will his vegetarian girlfriend become a meat-eater? Since the last couple of memoirs I've read suffered from the lack of large-scale narrative arc, it was a relief to be reminded that you can write this kind of book as a book, rather than as an essay collection. The pigeon-hunting and pigeon-raising stories were great.
The girlfriend stuff, though... Rinella might be a skilled writer but I have no idea what his girlfriend saw in him; whenever he talks about their relationship, or her vegetarianism, or his ceaseless meat-related wheedling and manipulation, he comes off as a total jerk. Actually, whenever he writes about women, he comes off as a jerk - he frequently introduces female characters with a paean to their physical appearance and then moves to a discussion of how silly it is when they talk. In a book devoted to detailed discussions of historical butchering practices, I had to get my gross-outs from sexism? Bleah.