Taste by Stanley Tucci is the June Left Coast Culinary Book Club selection. Yes, I said June. I ordered it in May. By the time the book was delivered, we were getting ready to leave for Spain. I looked at the page count and I knew that it wasn’t going to be long enough for the trip. I left it home for weight purposes and then all of a sudden I had two books to keep up with all summer and fall.

Since we missed the book club gathering in June, I just waited until I got ahead on Atlas Shrugged and didn’t have a second book to go back to. Now was the time.

I am certainly not a big Hollywood person. Most of Stanley’s movies I have never watched. The most famous include Prizzi’s Honor, The Devil Wear’s Prada, Lovely Bones and Julie & Julia. This book is a memoir of sorts that traces his life through food memories.

There are probably 25-30 recipes in the book, nearly all of them are of Italian origin. Typically, they come near the end of each chapter. However, there are sometimes two recipes in a chapter. And some, don’t have any. I would describe it this way, there is some sort of anecdotal story about a period of his life ended by the recipe involved in the anecdote.

How to be kind here? Let’s just say that unless you are a Stanley Tucci fan, this book is pretty much a train wreck. It very roughly follows his life from childhood to current day. Knowing nothing about him, the book cuts right into some situation where he talks about food and then usually punctuated by a recipe. It jumps back and forth in time with unfamiliar characters after about the first third of the book.

I suppose part of my irritation of the book is that I certainly didn’t appreciate the politics whitewashed throughout the book. I would characterized him as New York City liberal turned ex-patriate feigns interest in traditional dishes. He does talk both about Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July with what feels like contempt. I get it to a degree, you like what you like but why bring it up at all?

I started out enjoying the first third of the book. These were largely about the nostalgia of childhood and certainly more innocent and varied. The recipes were interpretations of memories. After that, the book turned into a wandering, food triggered grab bag.

He seems to have a propensity to talk about restaurants that no longer exist. It is written as if it is still available until you read the entire story and then there is a footnote that this is now closed. I think it could have been written in a more agnostic fashion such as “the best XXXX I ever had was at YYYY” and not “Go to YYYY on ZZZZ for XXXX *It is now closed”. I guess for me, New York City or Sicily is just as foreign as the moon so I don’t feel the need to follow all of his restaurant suggestions. Nor would I expect something from the 1980s to even be available 30-40 years later.

It is not that often that I am this critical about something. I personally give this a ‘not recommended’ because the book was expensive at $25, boorish and just too neurotic for me. But, to each his own.

End Your Programming Routine: Stanley bills himself a foodie. I can respect and appreciate that. It is clear that he strongly leans towards Italian food which is way more diverse that the Olive Garden menu. I am not a big pasta person at all, so I can appreciate recipes that go deeper into the cuisine than what everybody knows. We are brother’s in that respect.