The Book of Eating

Adventures in Professional Gluttony

By: Adam Platt

Narrated by: Adam Platt

A wildly hilarious and irreverent memoir of a globe-trotting life lived meal-to-meal by one of our most influential and respected food critics.

As the son of a diplomat growing up in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, Adam Platt didn’t have the chance to become a picky eater. Living, traveling, and eating in some of the most far-flung locations around the world, he developed an eclectic palate and a nuanced understanding of cultures and cuisines that led to some revelations which would prove important in his future career as a food critic. In Tokyo, for instance—“a kind of paradise for nose-to-tail cooking”—he learned that “if you’re interested in telling a story, a hair-raisingly bad meal is much better than a good one.""

From dim sum in Hong Kong to giant platters of Peking duck in Beijing, fresh-baked croissants in Paris and pierogi on the snowy streets of Moscow, Platt takes us around the world, re-tracing the steps of a unique, and lifelong, culinary education. Providing a glimpse into a life that has intertwined food and travel in exciting and unexpected ways, The Book of Eating is a delightful and sumptuous trip that is also the culinary coming-of-age of a voracious eater and his eventual ascension to become, as he puts it, “a professional glutton.”

I love reading about food adventures

This was a fun, interesting account of Adam's life and travels. I love the way he describes food.

I Looked Forward to Every Chapter

Knowing little of the restaurants in NYC I was surprised at the total engaging charm and enjoyment I got from this book. I put my toe in with chapter one and then I looked forward to every chapter following. Fun, funny, interesting, with prose that threaded and built into a whole story - a life of eating and writing for a living.

Being aware of a couple of Platt's reviews that circulated nationally, I loved getting his take on how things unfolded following those published pieces. Delicious!

Very disappointing.

I thought the book was supposed to be about his work as a food writer. Instead it is a rambling account of his "dim" memories about his childhood and becoming a food critic. The word "dim" is used repeatedly which makes one doubt the accuracies of his writing. Very pompous and very boring. Truly disappointing.