It Must've Been Something I Ate: The Return of the Man Who Ate Everything

by Jeffrey Steingarten

In this outrageous and delectable new volume, the Man Who Ate Everything proves that he will do "anything" to eat everything. That includes going fishing for his own supply of bluefin tuna belly; nearly incinerating his oven in pursuit of the perfect pizza crust, and spending four days boning and stuffing three different fowl--into each other-- to produce the Cajun specialty called "turducken."
It Must've Been Something I Ate finds Steingarten testing the virtues of chocolate and gourmet salts; debunking the mythology of lactose intolerance and Chinese Food Syndrome; roasting marrow bones for his dog, and offering recipes for everything from lobster rolls to gratin dauphinois. The result is one of those rare books that are simultaneously mouth-watering and side-splitting. "From the Trade Paperback edition."

Genres: Food, Nonfiction, Essays, Food Writing, Memoir, Cooking, Foodie

ebook

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Jeffrey Steingarten is an American lawyer and culinary critic/columnist. He is a regular columnist for Vogue magazine. He has also written for Slate. His 1997 book of food-related essays, The Man Who Ate Everything, is a Julia Child Book Award winner and was also a James Beard Book Award finalist. In 2002, Steingarten published a second collection of essays entitled It Must've Been Something I Ate. Working with Ed Levine, he was host of the show, "New York Eats" which was broadcast from 1998-2000 on local area Metro TV (a local station that only broadcasts in the New York City area.) The show consisted of taste tests, restaurant reviews, and the cooking and eating of famous chefs' recipes. Steingarten frequently serves as a judge on the Food Network show Iron Chef America, and is known for his sharp confrontations with the other judges.

Reviews

[Chris "Stu" · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jeffrey Steingarten is just such a pompous ass that I couldn't be bothered to finish it. He is smug, sure of himself, and lecturing, and proud of all these things. He writes his articles with his pompous bullshit at the center of them. The man clearly knows his shit in the kitchen, but I couldn't get myself to continue reading, despite the possibility that I'd learn something, because I couldn't bring myself to hang out with this guy annoying me in my bed, on the couch, on the subway, at lunch time, on the john--all the places a book hangs out with you over the course of reading it. I want this book out of my house as soon as possible.

[Plateresca]

Brilliant food writing: witty, intelligent, informative. The only problem with this book is that while reading it, one wants to cook all the time (not that one's relatives object, though).

[Oceana2602 · Rating 4 out of 5]

It Must Have Been Something I Ate is another typical case of me being left unattended in a book store. It, too, was on the bargain table. It had a dog on the cover, who is looking into a bowl with a swimming man inside.
I had to buy it.

What it is about? Jeffrey Steingarten is food critic of Vogue. No, I don't read Vogue and I had never heard of him before, but he has a very entertaining style to write about food, funny and yet informative. And he really does eat everything. I love food and I love good writing, so this book was perfect for me. I bought the first one ("the Man Who Ate Everything") in New York just a week later.

[K.]

After about 150 pages, Steingarten tipped over the edge into insufferable, after starting out as cautiously entertaining. I couldn't take more hyperbolic descriptions of food interspersed with casually offensive remarks about women or the name-dropping, though I should have expected the latter from a Vogue writer, I suppose.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pass-along from my mom, It Must've Been Something I Ate: The Return of the Man Who Ate Everything is an amusing collection of food-related essays.

Steingarten is a food critic for Vogue; however, in this collection, he focuses more on the history of certain dishes and foodstuffs, as opposed to reviewing the producers of the dishes. He travels to Italy, France and Mexico in search of traditional breads, cheeses, and tortillas; participates (kind of) in the slaughter of a pig and visits some of the best steakhouses in the country. Most of the essays are accompanied by a recipe which is the result of many hours of hard work in his own kitchen, as Steingarten is as much of an artiste as a critic.

The writing is engaging, with bits of sly humour interspersed with vignettes describing his adventures; even though probably I'll never visit the places he talks about or eat the dishes about which he raves, I still enjoyed his discussion of them. This book is probably better savored in bits and pieces, rather than read through gluttonously.

Recommended to those who like engaging essays, regardless of the topic.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

classic steingarten, funny, controversial, mouth watering, informative, audacious and provoking. 500 pages of his essays on food and drink, mostly usa and france, with sides to china and thailand and lots of recipes that take 2-4 days and need a flea market table top rotisserie and 12 different brands of espresso makers. but really, he does look into food myths like cheese being bad for your heart and red wine being good. he also smuggles in french cheese (with full customs declarations), attempts smuggling in fen/phen from mexico, and finds a great taco place in mexico where he attempts to learn how to make tortillas (lard is one of the secrets and softer flour) and learns some great recipes for carne asada, salsa fresca and salsa piquante plus liquidy guacamole sauce. and on. at times his verbosity gets in the way of the telling but that is his style, and worth it to get his insights on food, cooking and nutrition. has a great index.

[First Second Books]

Anyone who has named their dog ‘Sky King’ is good with me.

I can’t wait for the weather to get a little colder so I can try this hot chocolate recipe! And I am tempted to make the potato gratin today. Possibly this will be impeded by me not having any potatoes? We shall see.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm still working on this, maybe, even though I've put it aside for now.

The intro was smart and funny and hooked me. He's much more adorable in writing than when I've seen him talking. Reading on, the cute continues, along with a lot of well-researched information. It's easy to become intoxicated with his giddy obsessions. Unfortunately, there's something lost with time. These pieces were written in the late '80s and early '90s, and could stand a new edition to update what is really compelling data about food and dining. What does X cost now? Is Y still an issue? How has Z changed in the last 20 years?

Finally, though some of the sidebars are illustrious and potentially useful (like some recipes that he's developed for a particular piece), many are unnecessary and distracting.

It sounds like I don't like it much, but I really think it is a lot of fun!

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, a foodie book is not typically my deal, but I picked this up for the annual reading challenge, and let me tell you: they're still not my deal. While this had its humorous moments, it was ridiculously cumbersome and repetitive after a while and if I had to read one more 'perfected' recipe, I may have had to do the unthinkable and stop reading a book before completing.

Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016, Task #22: Read a food memoir

[G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeffrey Steingarten is (was?) a food writer for Vogue magazine. He is more than a little arrogant ("despite an abundance of God-given modesty"). He is also guilty of repeatedly using some annoying phrases ("and the scales came off my eyes"). That said he has taken his passion for food to help inform and to debunk misinformation. This is his second book, and follows the same format as his first reprinting articles he wrote for Vogue where he does a deep dive into some aspect of food or drink. Who else, but a man obsessed with food, would do the following: roast geese using several methodologies over weeks to get perfect crispy skin AND tender meat (he failed), try and understand the markings on the side of a wheel of Parmesan Reggiano in order to find the "best" cheese (try to find something produced in Sept-Nov from a mountain region), test sixteen espresso makers in order to make the perfect cup, dry age a side of beef in his refrigerator for 7 weeks (most steakhouses fail to age long enough for optimal flavor), and investigate why the government is against the importation of raw milk cheeses is illegal? Not every article is interesting, and I will admit to skimming through some of this book. But if you love food, you will find something new and interesting that you wouldn't have learned on your own.

[Lemanakmelo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would prefer a 10 star system, because this is a 7/10 book. Not as low a 6, which I'm giving it, but not quite 80% either. I enjoyed it, but I never quite got around to finishing it, because it's a series of essays and at some point while reading the titles stopped grabbing me.

[Maya Ratna · Rating 1 out of 5]

makes me hungry! but bored me :(

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Docked a star for the smarmy sexism.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was great - it can't top Steingarten's "The Man Who Ate Everything" but it's still excellent. I felt like I adored every story in the first book while in this one, there's a few stories I started and then skipped, such as his ode to phen-fen. Just didn't grab me.

But more often than not, I am so charmed by Steingarten's hilarious passion for food - for all things edible and for every part of the process of making things edible - that I get completely sucked in to articles on topics I would otherwise have no interest in. I love the story of his injury and how he is forced to try his freezer-burned product samples, learn to make bread on one foot and suffer the knowledge that his wife is in Shanghai squandering opportunities to feast on Chinese delicacies.

His tone is so accessible and so funny that it makes all of his ridiculous exploits seem perfectly plausible. After reading some of his work, I find it completely reasonable that he begins cooking for his dog as though it's his new career. I find his endless curiosity and interest just fascinating.

He's got exactly the right mix of humor, precision and food-worship to make him my absolute favorite food writer.

[Chef · Rating 2 out of 5]

IMBSIA: TROFTMWAE (catchy title) is a relic really, a time capsule from an era of late-90s food journalism where magazine expense budgets were seemingly limitless and food critics had cultural cache. Steingarten, Chief Food Guy, at Vogue, was the paramount Chief Food Guy, of the time.

I read his first collection of essays years ago, and they were good, but this series is ho-hum. The structure of each essay quickly becomes formulaic (Steingarten takes common misconception, Steingarten visits or researches origin of misconception, Steingarten authoritatively man-splains the "correct" point of view).

His writing is great. It's funny. But it the prose is not enough to trump the fact that this guy is an asshole, and (ore disconcertingly so) also largely oblivious to any cuisine that isn't familiar to him. Of the 20+ essays in this collection, only ONE focuses on a cuisine that isn't from Europe or America. Steingarten "hops on a plane to France" probably six too many times for my liking.

So, really, The Man Who Ate Everything Is really only The Man Who Ate Everything European and there's something unsettling and limited about that.

[Ty · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those who don't know him, the author, Jeffrey Steingarten, is a famous food writer for Vogue magazine and a frequent judge on Iron Chef America. On Iron Chef, Steingarten is famous for his sarcasm and dry wit, and all of this comes through in this book. The book is a compilation of the author's columns from the magazine, but they are fairly long, so it reads as a series of loosely related chapters. Steingarten is somewhat obsessed with several things, including recreating famous dishes, exploring exotic travel locations, and debunking food related myths. Thus, we get chapters on the glories of "pot-au-feu", the search for mushrooms, and the myths and realities of food allergies. Some of the high points for me where his fanatical pursuit of the perfect french bread, obsessive testing of espresso makers and a trip to Thailand. If you enjoy food related writing this book will be very enjoyable. I will definitely read the author's first book, "The Man Who Ate Everything" some time soon.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving this book 4 stars, even though I don't personally find it interesting enough to finish. Steingarten is a food writer for Vogue Magazine, and It Must've Been Something I Ate is a collection of his previously published essays. He's very witty, a gourmand but not at all a food snob, and I liked the individual essays, but after I read the first half of the book I felt like that was enough. I'm at somewhat a loss to explain this reaction. I think I was expecting something along the lines of Calvin Trillin's essays, which are more about food itself, whereas Steingarten ranges more widely, discussing things like the science behind raw milk non-aged cheeses, the history of the wedding cake, and the psychology of food allergies. I got as far as the piece where Steingarten begins talking at length about the ins and outs of gratins when my eyes started to glaze over. I think this is a very good collection of essays, but I really want to stop reading them now.

[Mme Forte · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a little snark, there are plenty of strongly held opinions, there are essays that often veer between food and travel writing, there are recipes, and there is a consistently clear and readable voice that will tell you more about various foods and means of cooking them than you ever dreamed you'd want to know.

Jeffrey Steingarten, food writer/critic for Vogue magazine, loves to eat and wants to make the acts of preparing and consuming food as meaningful and fulfilling for everyone as they are for him. If you already enjoy cooking and eating, and you don't mind a little sarcasm, a soupcon of smugness, and firm directives on how to improve your life at the table and before the stove, pick this book up. You can read an essay, put it down (perhaps to try the recipe often included at the end), leave it for a while, then go on to another. I can't say this collection is the equal of the first book I read by this author ("The Man Who Ate Everything"), but there's so much good here that I can't hold that against him.

[711Isabel B · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am reading IT MUST'VE BEEN SOMETHING I ATE, by Jeffery Steingarten, a Vogue food critic (although the book has absolutely nothing to do with clothes style).

So far, I'm enjoying it (despite how slowly I'm reading it - I keep getting distracted - look! A butterfly!). Steingarten's writing is very good. He writes in a format similar to Atul Gawande's BETTER and COMPLICATIONS. He will have a little anecdote, followed by a longer description about an idea or curiosity he had about the topic, then statistics, studies and/or research done on the topic, and a final conclusion about the idea.

He also covers a wide range of topics, spanning from catching bluefin tuna to wedding cakes to the law rendering it illegal to allow raw-milk cheese under 60 days old into the country (which he flat-out refuses to accept lying down).

So far, it has been a really funny, interesting piece, and I look forward to reading more about it.

[Rosanne Swiatek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection of treatises on food, eating, travel, medical and scientific research. He is probably America's No. 1 food writer/critic, who writes the food column for Vogue Magazine. This book is excellent and also contains recipes -- some of which I would never have even attempted at my height of gourmet cooking (25-30 years ago) because of incredible cost of ingredients, scarcity of ingredients, and the length of time it takes to make (3 days up to weeks!). However, some recipes seem at least worth trying, since in his opinion, they are the best of the best versions anywhere. Very entertaining book, not for the squeamish or vegetarians, yet I had no trouble getting through it. Some sections verged on too much information, but I tried not to think about it as I plowed through. It was too entertaining to give it up. Will keep this book among my thousands of cookbooks.

[Claudia Sorsby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do enjoy his work, but this was a bit uneven. I confess, I find the travel-writing pieces to be the least interesting (because I don't generally like travel writing), nor am I a big fan of the name-dropping. Yes, yes, you know all the best food people, and I'm happy for you, but since I can't just call up the best pastry chef in France any old time, it's not exactly helpful to keep telling me that's how you solve your problems.

When Steingarten just focuses on food, straight up, though, he's really rather marvelous. Sometimes he's quite funny, too, which is always a bonus.

He's also given me a great line about roasting chicken, so I'm now apparently starting a mini-collection of quotes about roasting fowl (I have another—from a Spanish mystery novel, no less—about roasting duck).

[Jenn Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this essay collection, but I remember enjoying Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything a good bit more, so I had to refrain from a 5 star rating here. Probably just a personal preference, as I can't put my finger on anything drastically different between the two.

I would say this is definitely not the type of nonfiction book that is "for everyone". Instead, if you are the type of person that enjoys reading moderately snarky and incredibly detailed food essays, you'll likely love it. Aside from loving Jeffrey Steingarten from the first time I saw him as a judge on Iron Chef America, he wins me over in his essays with his painstaking attention to minutia, ranging from the history to the science of almost any food item you can imagine.

[Aishe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved The Man Who Ate Everything. It opened my eyes to a whole new way of experiencing food, so of course when I came across this title, I had to snap it up, and ate it as well. I love the author's wit, and obsession with his subject matter. As always, somehow I draw out reading Steingarten, so it takes months or years to read a whole book, but this in no way indicates an issue with the pacing or writing, merely my own observed quirk, regarding the author's books. It is an excellent book, although I'll probably not do crazy and try to recreate the recipes, but I will employ many of the secret techniques AND seek out some of the other literature cited, yes even the scientific sources!

[Leigh-ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steingarten has always annoyed the heck out of me as a judge on "Iron Chef", so I was shocked to read this collection of his articles from Vogue magazine and find him not only likable, but charming. Go figure. The man knows food, and he's not afraid to get dirty (i.e., to actually cook it himself) to get what he wants. If you're a foodie, you'll love all the in-depth information about everything from finding the best Parmesan to making your own blood sausage (not for the squeamish). After reading, I can appreciate his personality on "Iron Chef" much more (I realize he has a dry sense of humour and isn't just stuffy). I still wish his table manners would improve.

[Maria Elmvang · Rating 3 out of 5]

An amusing collection of food-related essays. Like in almost all essay collections there were some I laughed at, some I found interesting, and some I couldn't relate to at all. Steingarten does have a very entertaining writing style, but I must admit that I didn't care much about his adventures when going fishing or the quest for finding the perfect original French cuisine restaurant.

On the other hand, I loved reading about his research of chocolate (who wouldn't!), his taste experiments of salt and coffee, and the description of how to make the perfect bread and pizza crust.

A fun read, and each essay only takes about 10-15 minutes to get through.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came to read Steingarten's books from watching Iron Chef America. Every time I watched, I was baffled by his smug comments to the chefs and often exclaimed "Who is this guy?" in disbelief. So I did some research and found two of his books. I read The Man Who Ate Everything and fell in love. I just had to read this book as well and I have to say that it lived up to my expectations. He is the perfect judge of food because he truly has explored every corner of the earth and tasted every taste. This book is very engaging and informative. I have many pages folded with information that I want to remember.

[Chinook · Rating 4 out of 5]

April and I went to the thrift store on base once, and we picked this up just because there was a part about turducken, which at that point Samantha still hadn't made me. The point was for us both to read it and then send it to Samantha - and finally, I can. I was startled at how much I liked a collection of cooking essays. I actually had to state at one point that I hadn't been getting turned on reading about French cooking!

"It had started as a ten-day hike, but on day nine we began reading a novel just published in paperback and were unwilling to move camp for the next 36 hours - until we had both finished 'One Hundred Years of Solitude.'"

[Krizia Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was funny, mouth-watering and obsessing book about food. You'll definitely get hungry and after reading the book your brain would definitely be full of facts about food, how to cook good book and where to find good food. Scrap that, its not about good food but THE BEST food. However, that seems to be my problem, its food that not everyone can afford. Its not about the cheapest food but THE BEST food with THE MOST EXPENSIVE price tag. Its not for middle class citizens. I also got nauseated reading too much about food. You should read this interspersed with other books but definitely still worth the read but not worth the buy. Maybe you could borrow it from someone.

[Callina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is pretty entertaining, but nowhere near as good as Steingarten's first book, The Man Who Ate Everything. It's still funny and witty, and his sometimes petty tone will make you laugh out loud. Overall this read is just not as thrilling as his first; it contains great educational pieces if you're into history and a lot of pieces that basically just describe how a dish is made--not as entertaining as reading about taste-testing ketchups and the onslaught of chain and franchise restaurants, which is what you'll find in the first book.

[angi · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really like how steingarten writes. plenty of self-deprecating humor but also lots of interesting facts. there's a piece about how he got some tuna fishermen to take him along on a trip, just so he can taste the freshest toro possible. that's hardcore!