Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto

by Victoria Abbott Riccardi

Book Overview

Two years out of college and with a degree from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, Victoria Riccardi left a boyfriend, a rent-controlled New York City apartment, and a plum job in advertising to move to Kyoto to study kaiseki, the exquisitely refined form of cooking that accompanies the formal Japanese tea ceremony. She arrived in Kyoto, a city she had dreamed about but never seen, with two bags, an open-ended plane ticket, and the ability to speak only...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 076790852X
• ISBN13: 9780767908528
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Don't read this while you're hungry!

and after you do read it, you'll need to find a Japanese grocer in your city, because you'll be inspired to hunt all over for soba sauce and azuki bean paste.What a delight this book is! It veritably sparkles like diamonds and rubies, and in fact she compares tea kaiseki with jewels.I borrowed a copy from a friend to read, but now I'm inspired to buy my own copy so I can re-savor it and also contribute to Victoria's royalties. She deserves so much for this splendid book.Her insights into the spirituality of food, even simple things like wrapping packages carefully like the Japanese do, make it a book that you can apply to your daily life, even if you never attend a tea ceremony.My *ONLY* gripe, and I really hate to say this, is that her connection with Zen Buddhism was tenuous. She does go to Mount Hiei toward the end of the book and tries to sit with the monks, but she spends a lot more time talking about recipes again. But really that's okay because her main emphasis is not to meditate until satori, but to appreciate the food connection.I can't think of anyone who would not fall in love with this book! Thank you, Bi-cu-to-ri-ha! (That's Japanese for her name, as heard from the lips of children.)

Discover Japan Through One Woman's Delicious Journey

Wow! I loved Untangling My Chopsticks. It is a delicious book from beginning to end. Victoria Abbott Riccardi's beautiful writing style made me feel like I was a part of her journey, discovering the foreign culture, customs and lifestyle of Japan. Through her detailed descriptions she gives the reader a very true sense of the people, the food and the natural beauty of the country. I loved learning about tea kaiseki and the foods that revolve around it. I craved Japanese food as I read the book and was thrilled to discover that each chapter ends with delectable recipes that are quite simple to prepare.This book has everything I love to read about from travel, to cooking, to history, to love (yes, it is a bit of a love story!). In summary, it is a fantastic book that captures the reader's attention through wisdom, humor and beauty.

Best book I've read in months

Untangling My Chopsticks is a book you want to pick up by just looking a the beautiful cover. And then the inside, just like a great piece of sushi, is wonderful. Riccardi's humor, candor and lush descriptions make this one of the best books I have read in a long time. She weaves the history of the tea ceremony with her personal stories of a year in Japan. Her descriptions of food will leave you mouth watering and her humor make you chuckle out loud. A great book to read and share with your friends. I'm going to use the great recipes to make a Japanese dinner for my bookgroup, so we can taste while we talk about the book!

Life lessons learned & ritual-imbued meals cooked & eaten

Three culinary trends today include drinking green tea, dining on meals composed of many small dishes, and exploring exotic gastronomic customs. I just read a book that brings those three together beautifully. It's called Untangling My Chopsticks, A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto, by Victoria Riccardi. Trained in Western culinary tradition and a veteran of a Parisian restaurant kitchen, Riccardi was on the classic culinary track. Until an employee of the Japan Society in New York mentioned kaiseki to her, that is. Victoria's trip to Japan to learn about kaiseki changed her life as her Cordon Bleu training never would. Kaiseki, I learned, is an elegant, ritualistic cuisine, a degustation of small, seasonal dishes, which developed in Zen monasteries to accompany the traditional Japanese tea ceremony. From page one Riccardi plunged me into exotic Kyoto, the acknowledged birthplace of kaiseki, with tales of her new home dubbed the "bedroom of eels," and her first meal, in a neon-yellow-splashed restaurant under the Kyoto train station. Her story unveils Japanese culture, taste, and tradition in prose that sparkles like the morning sun on a breeze-rippled pond. Before Untangling my Chopsticks, my knowledge of Japanese food culture could be summed up in a paragraph, the one dubbed "sushi etiquette" sometimes printed on the back of American sushi menus. The story of Victoria's sojourn was like a gift to me: lush with details of friendships forged, life-changing lessons learned, and deeply symbolic, ritual-imbued meals cooked and eaten. It opened my mind.

The Serendipity of Kyoto

I loved this book. I've never been to Japan, but Victoria Abbott Riccardi's keen eye for detail and luminous imagery lured me into Japanese culture, ritual and customs quite unexpectedly. She led the reader with her to a new place, so different from the West, where every gesture has meaning, often more subtle than the Western mind can comprehend. I traveled with her through the back streets of Kyoto, saw the fruit trees in bloom, met the friends she met, worked with and lived with, and shared her cooking. The book almost becomes an etiquette manual, so detailed is it on how non-Japanese must behave to be accepted. Riccardi explains the mysteries of the tea ceremony and her particular experience with tea kaiseki which precedes tea so clearly that the reader is almost a participant in the ritual. I particularly loved Riccardi's analogies that explained things Japanese by comparisons to what Americans can understand. For example, she likens an octopus to a rubber bathtub mat with its suction cups! The recipes at the end of each chapter beg to be tried and happily the ingredients can be found in the United States. With an overlay of humility, humor and empathy the author takes the reader on a delightful journey of understanding, of maturation, soul-searching and personal peace. I recommend this book to those interested in food, the subtle and often unfathomable culture of Japan, and to anyone who wants to enjoy the vicarious adventure of a curious, energetic and open-minded American woman in Japan.