aside from fantasy books featuring various dark entities, my other favourite genre happens to be food writing. anthony bourdain, jeffrey steingarten, i don't care, if somebody writes a book about food i will probably want to read it. and then eat the things i read about. so i picked up "last chance to eat" from the library. touted as being a more serious foodie's version of "super size me" and "fast food nation". i won't lie to you, it started off very good. the chapters on eggs and cheeses are excellent. and i learnt that pears are only ripe for about 10 minutes. how true. have you ever tried to catch a pear at optimal ripeness? it's no easy task. however, by the time i got to the final chapter, which happened to be about fish, i think mallet had run out of steam, and it just seemed rather rushed. and then (and then!) she finishes up with this absolutely bizarre george orwellian vision of the future of global cuisine. very sci-fi, very weird, and very out of place in what was more of a series of reminiscences. so, a pretty good food book, but not my favourite. if you want something really good check out taras gresco, or the above mentioned jeffrey steingarten, or even (surprise!) ludwig bemelmans' "when you lunch with the emperor".
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