From award-winning actor and food obsessive Stanley Tucci comes an intimate and charming memoir of life in and out of the kitchen.
Before Stanley Tucci became a household name with The Devil Wears Prada, The Hunger Games, and the perfect Negroni, he grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the recipes and into the stories behind them.
Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about growing up in Westchester, New York, preparing for and filming the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia, falling in love over dinner, and teaming up with his wife to create conversation-starting meals for their children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burnt dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.
Written with Stanley's signature wry humour and nostalgia, Taste is a heartwarming read that will be irresistible for anyone who knows the power of a home-cooked meal.
Most memoirs and especially celebrity memoirs are of experiences and people and "look at me" and "look at what I have done". Which isn't a terrible thing. We all have our favorite celebrities and we want to see what they do and know what they think.
This memoir, however, is so much more than that. Stanley Tucci could give us lists of his films and accolades and awards/nominations. He doesn't. He talks to us about his life, yes. But he does so as if we are sitting at the table with him, enjoying a wonderful meal with a friend.
He takes us through his life, culinary experience by culinary experience. Food by food. Meal by meal. Recipe by recipe. Food and life intersect on the page, just as they do in real life.
Stanley talks of his childhood and his experiences growing up Italian American in New York. Interspersed are recipes and talk of how his mother cooked and what he learned.
We read of different film experiences and interspersed are restaurant visits and recipes and friends.
We learn of his first marriage and his wife's death and we learn of his experience meeting his second wife and interspersed with it all are recipes and meals and how food and tradition become important. How, as we blend families, we also blend traditions and recipes.
He throws in famous names and meal experiences and brings them down to our level and we see them all as the humans they are, instead of celebrities from afar.
Stanley Tucci is a precious man and must be protected at all costs. His talent onscreen is fantastic. The chameleon-like way he becomes each character never fails to amaze. His way with words is as charming as his way with food.
His memoir is deliciously sublime and was a joy to devour. I imagine the audio book, with Stanley as narrator, is even better.
My copy was a gift, but run as fast as you can and find one for yourself!
Read 9/22
* * * * *
5/5 Stars.
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