Blue Trout and Black Truffles: The Peregrinations of an Epicure

Though Blue Trout and Black Truffles is billed as Culinary journey, and it is at that, it is also something completely unexpected, an introduction to European life in the 1920s through 1940s. The exploration of food and wine is coupled with vibrant characters and unforgettable settings.

What a romp in the world of food! You'll feel satisfied at the end of the book... like a good meal.

Wechsberg's name ought to be mentioned alongside M.F.K. Fischer's. His writing is evocative, precise, and vivid. Reading this book makes me wish I could board a time machine and eat in the restaurants he described in the 1950s. Like many Viennese, Wechsberg loves the old city, the city that vanished after the wars, and resurrects it in memory.

Wechsberg's book is an established classic on a par with those of A. J. Liebling and Waverly Root. Like those other authors, Wechsberg was a journalist who wrote about food, restaurants, and food cultures in the mid-20th century, and his insights and great storytelling give the writing a permanent appeal. This can be seen from the reaction after this essay collection (whose chapters were originally written as magazine articles) appeared in this reprint edition in the mid-1980s. I was at a Christmas party with some accomplished food folks, including Paul Bertolli of the Chez Panisse in Berkeley, and was recounting to someone one of the stories ("Tafelspitz for the Hofrat") from this book. When I finished I found that most of the room was listening, and that many of them, independently, had recently read the book too. That particular essay, by the way, has lately been re-discovered in Vienna, where it was set, and has been proudly adopted by some restaurants there. In this book Wechsberg interviewed, and popularized to US readers, the legendary Fernand Point, chef and owner of the 20th-century's most famous and influential restaurant in France (and for whom the _Guide Michelin_ reportedly debated adding a fourth star to their rating system for premium restaruants). Some of the chapters are interviews, some experiences and some celebrations of food. This book is well known and indispensable to food fanatics and those seeking more of the background and context from which contemporary western culinary culture -- high cuisine as well as comfort food -- emerged.