The Man Who Ate the World

by Jay Rayner

My review: 3/5 stars

A decent enough food book, but a thought struck me early on and only became more reinforced as I read: Jay Rayner is a journalist first and a foodie second. His first love is clearly words; the book takes place too much in his head and not enough in his mouth.

Some distractingly bad copy-editing. For example, there's a hotel, the name of which is spelled two different ways on successive pages. Oh, and if there's one word you need to get right in a book about food, that word is "palate."

Worth borrowing from the library if you're into food porn (as I unapologetically am) but not a keeper for the permanent shelf.

An excerpt below from my favorite chapter - on New York City, natch. (I clipped and reformatted liberally, too much to faithfully use ellipses or any other notations. Just imagine they're scattered throughout.)

"I go straight to a food discussion board called Opinionated About. The thread I want, the one I have been waiting for, is finally there. It's located exactly where it should be: in the 'Formal Dining' part of the website, under 'New York.' The first post had gone up about an hour before and is by a man called Steve Plotnicki.

There are a couple of dozen photographs, all of them of plated food: an egg in an egg cup with a turban of cream piled high with shiny black caviar; slices of fish, fanned across the plate and drizzled with a sauce in a funky shade of yellow. There is a duck dish and a foie gras dish, and a whole bunch of other things besides. Plotnicki has invited the members of this site to identify where the meal that these dishes were a part of, was taken.

The first response had been posted just twenty-four minutes after the original. Samantha's message says simply "Per Se." I note that Samantha hasn't bothered with a question mark. She is certain she is right.

She is. "That was one of the places we ate at," Plotnicki replies.

A few minutes later someone called Ian chips in. "Eleven Madison Park and WD-50." Again, no question mark.

"That makes three," Plotnicki says. "Two to go."

Ian is on a roll. "Jean-Georges."

"You're a clever lad," Plotnicki says. "One left."

Now the first note of disbelief creeps in, from a poster called Scotty. "Five dinners in one night? Respect."

"How does one logistically eat that many meals @ dinner?" asks another.

"Some serious eating there chaps," says a third. "I applaud your bravery and your gluttony."

Plotnicki explains: these dishes were part of a restaurant crawl taking in five of the very best restaurants in the city - no more than two or three small, tasting-menu-sized courses in each place - that it was prearranged and that the two diners involved were't always served the same dish, which explains the large number of photographs. Not that any of this is news to me. I know all the details. I know all the dishes. As he has already said, Plotnicki was not alone in this adventure. He had an accomplice. That accomplice was me."