As the title suggests, this book is about food, cooking and restaurants. Gopnik, an investigative journalist by trade, tells us everything one wants to know about the history of cooking and restaurants, including the new eating trends such as the molecular cuisine of Barcelona. Gopnik examines our choices of food. In an apolitical way he gives an inside view into the meat vs. vegetarian debate. My favorite quotation: “Cooking is the faith that raw ingredients can be conjured into a nightly miracle”. The Table Comes First is a great book for all practitioners or theorists of the art of gastronomy.
Gopnik is a staff writer for the New Yorker and also the author of the best seller Paris to the Moon and he lived in France with his family for five years.