Book Log 2007 #18: The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten

Steingarten quit his job as an attorney to become the food critic at Vogue, and his lawyerly focus and obsession with food are well documented in this volume of his essays primarly drawn from his work for the magazine. He opens the book by cataloging his own food phobias and his attempts to overcome them, and from there discourses far and wide on food subjects, from his attempts to become proficient at making bread to heading to the four corners of the globe to try something. He doesn't quite go to the cobra heart extreme that closes A Cook's Tour, but Steingarten does go quite a ways to becoming someone who has eaten everything.

That being said, I did find myself getting a little worn out by the end of the book, as there's only so much urbane self-deprecation I can take at one time. There are a few essays whose inclusion confuses me (one on pheremones comes to mind), and some show their age (such as the one on diets which refers the recent Atkins craze - the first one, back in the '80s).

Overall, it's an enjoyable collection, and well-suited to a commute, too.