I Read Stanley Tucci’s ‘Taste: My Life Through Food”.

I think Stanley Tucci is cool. I’ve not taken it as a slight that there are times at my baldest, depending on my outfit or glasses choice or lighting, perhaps, that I’ve been told that I look like him. There are worse celebrities to resemble. This resemblance is the reason that this book was bought for me. Something else worth mentioning in this preface: I’m very much not a food person. While I do try my best to be adventurous in trying new things and not turning new stuff down if it presents itself, I don’t often create memories that surround the food itself, focusing more on the atmosphere, the company, and the overall experience of the restaurant or the meal. This book was tastefully not suited for that kind of perspective.

Overall, this book reads very smoothly. There’s a celerity about the way that Tucci writes that feels perfect for a memoir of this nature. He breaks down where he is, why he’s there, and what brought him to these dishes very directly. It’s always remarkable how he manages to conjure these memories and the way that each dish tastes. You can get a very clear sense of how much of a role food plays in his life. There’s a palpable sixth sense beyond just his taste that makes food that much more special for him. It translates beautifully. If one were to be the type to want to experience Tucci’s food journey beside him, this is such a great book. Not only does he break down the inspiration for the meals, and set the tone for what the restaurant is established for (and often its owner or chef), but more often than not he includes his recipes or ways that he was able to recreate the dishes themselves simply and colloquially. This isn’t a book trying to double as a cookbook. I don’t think it tries to reach too deeply into biography territory either. This book has a very distinct thesis and sticks to it. The reading flows, and the language is conversational… this is a very readable book. I think this is a book tailor-made for vacations, especially for people who are traveling to new countries (I would heavily recommend it for people heading to Italy or France for some food recommendations).

For better or for worse, there is very little left by way of someone like myself who reads about food (or honestly, even eats food) with the attention of grazing livestock. This is just another function of my life that I have to engage in to live. I rarely have had food that has given me pause, and the process or act of cooking doesn’t grant me the serenity or sense of purpose that it can often give other people. This confuses me, though, as I do love watching shows like Chopped and Beat Bobby Flay and watching Emeril Lagasse back when I was in high school. I think I love watching the passion that so many of these people put in to something. So it isn’t so much the food itself, the cooking itself, but instead watching someone craft something that they pour so much of themselves into that really steals me away. For all of the flavors and all of the unctiousness that Tucci describes within… I’ll take his word for it.

Something that I did notice throughout this book that really drew me out of this book was his descriptions of foods and opportunities that were granted him almost exclusively due to his stature as a celebrity or by means of his wealth. By no means am I resentful of his station nor do I think it’s wrong of him to be able to find these opportunities. I hope he lives his life as strongly as his means allow. But I think it’s a little bit tougher for The People Who Will Read This to be able to mirror those same changes. I don’t personally prefer that kind of perspective, though the more I think about it, I can see how certain audiences might like to vicariously live through others. So take that for what you will.

There’s something else.

I noticed that throughout this book, he often referred to many people that he shared his table with as friends of varying degree. Good friends. Close friends. Great friends. And while reading this, it made me often think about the way that we dole out this moniker to those around us. How often does he keep in touch with these people? How far do people bend for him? How gracious are we to allow people to hold this title, and how many gradients are there on this sliding scale? I have been doing a lot of assessing and coping and trying to step back from how charitable I can be about how I feel about this word, this role in my life, and the way that he’s so benevolent about the distribution of this word gave me a pretty good and positive feeling about the way that he keeps people in his life and the way that he holds them up. So that’s something.

I recommend this book if you love food! It will give you a great perspective, great ideas, and will let you roam the world with this awesome and mostly grounded celebrity as he does a pretty great job at allowing you to sit at the same table as him and experience the places he’s eaten and the people he’s eaten with. For me, I felt a little bit like sitting in the backseat of a car amidst a conversation I had nothing to do with. But the title says it all: My Life Through Food. So that’s more of an issue with my own tastes and not from that of the author!