My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/Fr0wrkRUr7s

Enjoy! ( )

Essays from travel and food writers such as Anthony Bourdain, Andrew Zimmern and several former writers at Gourmet Magazine. Essays include flirting over a traditional Egyptian breakfast, the most celebrated restaurants of New York, learning to cook the local specialties of Jerusalem. and shadowing a resort chef on the island of Mustique. One of the most interesting essays was by ex-pat pastry chef David Lebovitz, about the hits and misses of Parisian chefs trying to create new trends. Some of the essays were disturbing, such as eating dogs or fruit bats. ( )

Mongolians don't believe in wasting any of their beloved sheep. Everything was in the bowl, floating in a sort of primeval ooze: lungs, stomach, bladder, brain, intestines, eyeballs, teeth, genitals. It was a lucky sheep dip; you were never sure what you were going to pull out. I fished carefully, not too keen on finding myself with the testicles. My first go produced an object that resembled an old purse dredged up from the bottom of a stagnant canal. I think it might have been an ear. I had better luck with the intestines, which were delicious, and once brought to the surface, went on for quite a while.

That's why we read books like this, which is sub-titled Life-changing Food Adventures Around the World, isn't it? For the startling meals we would never have thought of as edible, let alone the company-best casserole, written about by people with a willingness to do anything as well as a good sense of humor. This anthology put out by Lonely Planet is, as with every anthology, a mixed bag of the fantastic, the heart-warming, the pretentious and the slightly boring. The count is loaded towards the fantastic, with the best story of all by Tim Cahill, The Rooster's Head in the Soup, which manages to be instructional, touching and very, very funny. Other stand-outs included a story about Kansas City barbeque by Doug Mack and a short bit by Andrew McCarthy (yes, that Andrew McCarthy) set in Thailand, about how a meal among friendly strangers can ease loneliness. ( )