Where Shall We Go For Dinner?

by Tamasin Day-Lewis

'A scrumptious umpteen course gastromance. I gobbled every word.' Richard E. Grant Sharing a good dinner is one of the chief pleasures of life. This is a year of travel and culinary discovery, part memoir, part love story, but the glue that holds it together is food, a shared passion, if not obsession. Tamasin and her companion Rob set out with no real plan for the forthcoming year other than that each trip offers the possibility of perfection and discovery of something new. Whether investigating the food scene in San Francisco, sipping a cocktail in Venice, or walking down Sullivan St in New York to dine on fried chicken at the Blue Ribbon, they always set out in hope of the perfect dinner. They may find it at a small cafe in the hills of Santo Stefano Belbo in Piemonte, or snacking on falafel in a warm wad of pitta bread at Mamoun's, a hole in the wall in Greenwich Village. Sometimes they try too hard and don't find it at all, but even the disappointment is food for thought...and there is always tomorrow. Tamasin captures beautifully the sense of expectation and excitement, the atmosphere of each place and the shared pleasures of the table. This is a book to be savoured, enjoyed and lingered over.

Genres: Food

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

From an illustrious family, Tamasin has also made a name for herself, in her own niche: cooking.

Tamasin is the daughter of Cecil Day-Lewis, poet laureate, and her brother is the acclaimed actor, Daniel Day-Lewis. She has established a career as a respected food writer - combining sophistication, literary skill and culinary class.

As well as writing a weekly food column for The Daily Telegraph, Tamasin's cookbooks have covered a range of comforting, rural recipes, from the preparation of seasonal dishes and picnics to the art of pie-baking and 'proper', slow cooking. She is a food purist and is known for her valiant promotion of all things organic and regional. She champions local products versus the supermarket giants.

Tamasin's books are refreshingly different for several reasons. She writes "for people who appreciate good food, for people of all skills." She collects recipes on her travels and sees her recipes as "a link with people" and her style is totally unique. Half novel, half practical, her pages are filled with fascinating background information on ingredients, memories, historical anecdotes, and all in impressively poetic language. Her book West Ireland Summers was a collection of favourite recipes taken from and inspired by her childhood in County Mayo. The rural theme continues in Tamasin's two series' for Good Food Channel, in which she cooks at her family home in the country.

Reviews

[Diane in Australia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tamasin, and her companion, Rob Kaufelt (American cheese connoisseur), spend a year traveling the world eating all manner of foods, and then Tamasin deftly describes them for us. I found the bits about the food to be interesting, but not so much the bits about her private life. She includes recipes at the end of each chapter.

3 Stars = I liked the book.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

While reading Where Shall We Go For Dinner, the thought "What a bitch!" crossed my mind several times. To me, Day-Lewis is the worst kind of foodie. She's a snob. She holds each experience up to a previous experience. This peach cannot be as good as the peach I had 7 years ago. These jams can't stand up to jams in England. Rather than facing each experience fresh and judging each on its own merits, she insists on comparing. I found the constant comparisons irritating. If I had to travel with her, I would quickly lose her or book a trip home.
I also did not care for her constant name dropping-Kinsley Ames and Julia Roberts just a couple she mentions. I've never heard of Tamasin Day-Lewis before picking up this book, but I understand that she's written numerous cookbooks. Also she's the daughter of a famous poet, Cecil Day-Lewis. So she lived her life surrounded by famous people. I've seen people name drop with more grace than Day-Lewis.
The one saving grace was passages like this:

"It's primrose pale, so crisp it shatters in the mouth once its hermetic seal is broken and the instensfied flavours within are released to flood onto the tonuge in a whoosh of perfect contrast: creaminess, spring softness, milkness with a lactic twinge."

Does it make you want to eat? The description was about stuffed courgette flowers with fresh ricotta and buffalo mozzarella. There were descriptions like that made my mouth water. That was really the only good reason to read this book. I did learn about new foods and I am excited to try new cheeses and Puglian olive oil. So if you enjoy her writing or her cookbooks (there were a couple of recipes at the end of each chapter) then I suggest picking it up.

[Lisa Lawless · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of course I loved this book. Her tales of travel, food discoveries, and cultural comparisons kept me stuck to the book to the end. I especially enjoyed how she acknowledged her own prejudice against American food culture but then came to appreciate some aspects of it. And, her descriptions of Italian food experiences, particularly in Puglia, were so distinct I could taste each dish.

[Juli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tamasin Day-Lewis is one of my favorite cookbook authors not because of the food, but because her writing is so inspired it's as much a pleasure to read her descriptions as to actually cook the stuff. Here she goes beyond recipe and instruction to actual memoir, using pivotal meals in her life as a way to explore her roles as friend, mother, daughter (to poet Cecil Day-Lewis), sister (to Daniel) and partner to Rob (owner of Murray's Cheese Shop). That sounds as though it would lead to lot of sentimental slop but TDL is more deft and in some cases scarily practical (unlike her boyfriend, she doesn't flinch at cooking road-kill badger, for example). Still, her tenderness (and intelligence) comes through, particularly when she writes about the death of her father.

[Louise Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two stars for the writing but mainly because I'm jealous of her beautiful homes in the country, jetting hither and thither in Manolos and impossibly interesting family. Four stars for the food/recipes.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

She is a bit odd to say the least and the piece about Julia Roberts is painful. That said she is kind of refreshing in her political uncorrectness....

[Hannah MacDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a dream for any foodies or wanderlusters out there! Tamasin is a food writer who brings you along on her trips to various parts of Italy, Spain and America, the descriptions of her experiences are vivid and exciting and are not to be read on an empty stomach.
Some of the views are a little outdated, I cringed at her practically fat shaming a Russian couple and she sometimes came across as a little pretentious but I guess it’s her job to critique, other than that it’s a really enjoyable read.