Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

I picked this up from the Librarian’s Choice shelves at my local public library (shout out to Aspen Hill Library in Montgomery County, Maryland). Two things caught my attention. First of all, that cover is an eye catcher for sure.

The second thing was the starburst blurb on the front cover, “A savory meal of a debut. Steven Rowley, author of The Guncle.” If it was a winner for the guy who wrote The Guncle, then it was worth tossing in my book bag. I loved The Guncle so much, see my review here. It was funny, it had heart, and it held together all the way to the end.

The protagonist of Food Person is Isabella Pasternak, a “food writer” living in NYC. Why the quotes? Well, at the start of the book she has been fired from her food writing job. No one in the food world has ever heard of her, even though she has heard of everyone in the food world.

To me, Isabella is a strange character. She comes off as a bookish, nerdy type, shy and introverted. She dresses not for success but for oblivion. She has no social life, no love life, no real family life, and no aspirations other than to be a food writer. Yet, some of the dialogue attributed to Isabella does not sound like it is coming from the person just described. All throughout the book I was constantly surprised at things she would say, things that did not at all sound like the main character of this book.

Isabella’s favorite place in the whole world is a used bookstore, where she scours the shelves looking for vintage cookbooks to add to her collection, which began with the Time Life Good Cook series, described by Isabella as the gateway drug to vintage cookbooks collecting. I should know, as I, too, collect that series, and as of this date, I am only missing one to complete the entire series: Beverages.

She frequently names off many of the great cookbook authors, like Maida Heatter, Nigella Lawson, Julia Child, the chefs at Cook’s Illustrated, M.F.K. Fisher, Ina Garten, Alice Waters, Ruth Reichl, and more. My own collection of cookbooks includes many of the famous chefs and vintage books that are found in this book.

She even mentions Laurie Colwin, both as a food writer and as a novelist. I first discovered Laurie Colwin in 1988 in a used bookstore when I first moved to the DC area. I soon learned that she was a food writer with several food essays published in Gourmet magazine. She also wrote 5 novels and 3 collections of short stories, but my favorite works of hers are Home Cooking and More Home Cooking, the two collections of food essays, some of which originated in issues of either the New Yorker or Gourmet. Without a doubt, Laurie Colwin is on my short list of people I would have loved to meet. I wrote about her here.

Food Person is basically a homage to NYC and the plethora of great chefs and popular restaurants, including those who have earned the famed Michelin stars. There’s a lot of name dropping in this book other than famous chefs or restaurants, trendy ingredients like truffles, caviar, Comté cheese (my personal favorite of all the French cheeses), Branzino, and more. Sometimes it felt like all the name dropping got in the way of the story itself, even though I enjoyed both.

This was a quick read for me. On Goodreads it enjoys a 3.62 average rating, which sounds about right to me. Since Goodreads still hasn’t gifted us with half-stars, I rounded up to 4 stars. As I said, if it was a winner for Steven Rowley, then it was a good read for me, especially as a debut novel!