Villas at Table: A Passion for Food and Drink

by James Villas

Book Overview

Representing the cream of James Villas' writing about food and drink, including his first piece for "Town and Country", this book is filled with recipes, literate explications of the origins of ingredients and dishes, trenchant critiques of restaurants, and exhortations to excellence.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060159952
• ISBN13: 9780060159955
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 302 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

More Great Food Writing from an Old School star columnist

`Villas at Table' is the seventh James Villas book I have reviewed and I need to recant a bit my opinion of Villas' essays in my review of `Stalking the Green Fairy'. In this piece, I said Villas' writing might not have quite the durability of similar writers such as John Thorne and Edward Behr. While I find in `Villas at Table' the same interest in the contemporary culinary scene as we see in his other collections of essays, I wish to loudly proclaim that Villas has something most other food columnists do not have. This is, I believe, the kind of strong opinions based on a thorough knowledge of his subject that provokes thought and discourse. This is not to say I always agree with Villas or that there are no statements in his writing which are dated. But, even the dated material that has been proven wrong by the course of time is an interesting basis for discussion. One favorite discovery in this book is in Villas interview with M.F.K. Fisher where they opine that buying fast food will make home cooking extinct. Since this was said in 1978, we have had the success of the Food Network and its roster of popular shows on cooking at home, the Slow Food movement, the success of supermarkets specializing in organic and seasonal produce, and a strong interest in healthy eating which can only be done within a reasonable budget by cooking and eating at home. The irony is that a similar culinary apocalypse was predicted in the late 1950s. This trend was simply not as deep as pictured by its critics and it was reversed by the appearance of Julia Child and the rise of interest in things culinary typified by Villas himself. But there is much, much more here than aging `causus bellum' statements. I experienced a minor epiphany upon reading the reaction of restaurateur Pearl Byrd Foster upon receiving a Virginia ham. In order to evaluate this seemingly magnificent cured thigh of pig, she proceeded to prepare it in her jambalaya recipe to see how it tasted when so cooked. This may seem to be an utterly simple act, yet the numerous references in `Cooks Illustrated' to testers doing similar experiments to evaluate a product never made an impression on me in the way it did when a very practical professional cook did the same thing. One of Villas' favorite complaints about modern celebrity chefs is that they spend so little time in their own kitchens actually preparing the food of which they speak on interview shows and on which they write in cookbooks based on their restaurant cuisine. In the abstract, I really discredit a chef for spending little time in his restaurant kitchen IF his staff faithfully recreates his recipes daily. If I ever happened to be so lucky as to actually get a reservation at Babbo, I would probably have a much more memorable experience if I ran into Mario Batali and had a few words with him than if Mario and not sous chef Andy Nusser were doing the cooking or manning the expediter's station. Mario and his book writing colleagues such as