The Gastronomical Me – A Review

Published by PolisPandit on May 17, 2021May 17, 2021

Writers did not celebrate food until MFK Fisher wrote The Gastronomical Me.  Women certainly were not meant to express passion for cooking or eating.  The modern world of celebrity chefs, food shows, and writers realizing fame through culinary prose was not only foreign, but unfathomable in Fisher’s time. Our recent article on Garlic, for example, would never have appeared in her era.  

When MFK Fisher published The Gastronomical Me in the 1940s, food was largely uninteresting to the American audience.  Writing on food was mostly limited to recipes.  Nobody would have considered themselves a gourmand or God forbid, a “foodie.”  What would now be considered “kitchen hacks” were reserved for the back pages of the newspaper.  Women were supposed to stand by the stove and cook or bake.  Nothing more.

This context makes The Gastronomical Me even more avant-garde for its time.  Fisher was not simply one to list ingredients or places she visited.  She instead wove beautiful autobiographical prose into the fabric of appetites and the desires of hunger.  This book in particular focuses on the story and narrative around the food – especially the people – as opposed to the details of every ingredient or restaurant patronized.  At a time when almost nobody was focused on food and travel as vehicles for communication, love, loss, family, and friendship, Fisher explained why food and exploring the unknown really mattered.  This was half a century before one of my favorite epicurean explorers made his mark with Don’t Eat Before Reading This, Kitchen Confidential, No Reservations, and Parts Unknown.  

“Some dishes and some humans live forever.”

– MFK Fisher 

The book is filled with entertaining and insightful vignettes.  From the art of ordering well off a menu to taking confident pleasure in dining out alone, Fisher’s stories will intrigue and make you smile.  Finally I met someone who demands as much conviction and focus on what to eat, whether at home or a restaurant.  I promise you will never say “oh anything” in response to what you would like to eat or order after reading this book.

In addition to her culinary prowess, Fisher showcases her worldliness in this book as well.  Keep in mind that most US Presidents in this era did not even travel beyond North America.  Fisher meanwhile was everywhere from her grandma’s kitchen in America to exotic tables with friends and lovers in France, Switzerland, and Mexico (on many different occasions).   While she celebrates the food they share, she is oftentimes more interested in exploring how it helps them communicate and understand each other’s appetites and desires.  

Many of her points on food and places will stay with you, maybe forever.  Below are a few that resonated with me:

On eating oysters:

“Of course it was different with tinned oysters in turkey dressing: they could be chewed with impunity, both social and hygienic, for some reason or other.  But raw, they must be swallowed whole, and rapidly.  And alive.” 

On Paris:

“Paris was everything that I had dreamt, the late September when we first went there.  It should always be seen, the first time, with the eyes of childhood or of love.”

On the wondrous simplicity of great restaurants:

“Another proof of my firm belief that if a restaurant will be honest about a few things, it can outlive any rival with a long pretentious menu.”

One of my favorite aspects of the book is the fact Fisher can never seem to remember every detail.  She admits it too.  Her prose will often preface with “I can’t remember much” or “I do not remember everything we ate.”  It is this honest and open approach, however, that draws the reader in.  What some may consider a weakness in their writing she converts to a strength, using the transparency to forge an even deeper relationship with her audience.  It is as if you are reminiscing on a trip you took alongside her.  Here is one of my favorite passages that illustrates these frequent, yet honest, bouts of forgetfulness:

“We ate and ate.  I can’t remember much of it except avocados in several different manners.  There was meat, though, probably found at great cost and, for me at least, impossible either to chew or swallow.  There were dozens of little dishes of sweet cooked fruits and flat titbits which could have been bats’ ears or sliced melon rind.  The man, his large eyes devoutly veiled, slid them in front of us, hour after hour.”  

So at this point you might be thinking that this founding mother of food writing wrote a flawless book.  It is not, however, without faults.  There are serious gaps in the book, particularly with regards to her love life.  In the first part she is with Al in France.  Then we never hear from Al again.  He simply disappears without a trace.  Chexbres then arrives on the scene without any mention as to how.  Not even a sentence.

Love life aside, she jumbles some of her storytelling.  It jumps too quickly from scene to scene without guideposts or transitions.  As if she compiled a bunch of notes together from separate occasions, merged them together, and called it a book.  Some may also find that she tells these stories in an overly-pretentious tone.  I appreciate her confidence and preferences, but can see how they may be off-putting to some.  It is hard to fault her here though when considering the environment she wrote in during the 1940s.  Nothing is more evident of this than her name – “MFK” – which was undoubtedly designed to neutralize her gender so readers would not bring immediate antipathy to a book by a female author on food.

In The Gastronomical Me, MFK Fisher showed America and the world that food is not merely fuel or a list of ingredients, but something to be enjoyed.  It is a vehicle to gain understanding about a person, place, or culture.  Food captures memories and teaches us not only about history, but about ourselves.  Hunger is not merely a craving, but something to be understood and embraced.

So don’t just go with “oh anything” for your next meal or for that matter, your next book.

You can find The Gastronomical Me on Amazon.