Taste: The No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller

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Monday: Meatball wedge. As we had meatballs in a slow-cooked, homemade, ragù with pasta for Sunday dinner, this lunch was a natural choice. We are glad you made it Stanley, and we love you. Your book is wonderful, and I highly recommend it. Italy is a very small country, really, in comparison to so many, but it’s so diverse geographically. And the influences over centuries and millennia are staggering: from the Middle East and North Africa, from Spain, from Germany, from France, from Austria and Hungary, from Greece. It’s incredible. All of those cultures have influence—yes, on politics, and, yes, the genetic makeup of Italians, but on the food, too. So, the food in the Veneto, where we’re going next, is completely different than the food in Sicily, and that makes sense because of topography, but also because of who ended up there and who ended up there. Describing Stanley Tucci wife, Felicity Blunt, cooking roast potatoes and complete confusion when they watch her boiling, fluffing them up and covering in goose fat.

Rome is another destination and Tucci explains what a true Carbonara is, its history and where to find “the best carbonara in a city of Carbonaras.” (chapter 8). We must eat pasta recipes that are approved by Italians! He talks about all of it and includes recipes, good ones. My galley didn't include photos, but I would bet the published version will, and I can't wait.It was ‘mostly’ enjoyable listening to Tucci share family stories, his mother’s amazing cooking, “memory meals”, recipes, his Italian culture and heritage, his growing up in New York, celebrity anecdotes, and his stark funny-bone personality. My bad I guess because I was hoping for more funny similarities about Italian Americans growing up! He shares memories of some of the best (and worst) meals he’s ever had, memories of discovering new restaurants while filming or traveling or vacationing. He also discusses the shared love of food with both his late first wife and his current wife and their children, and one of his greatest fears when battling his own cancer diagnosis. (Plus, recipes. I’m in heaven.) I listen to 4-5 audiobooks a month on Audible. If you sign up here, you can get 30 days free trial on Audible which gives you 1 credit to get any Audiobook you want and access to hundreds of free material including audiobooks and podcasts. Who is the author? Stanley Tucci is an Italian-American actor, director, cookbook author, writer, and self-declared food lover. When he’s not gracing our screen in movies like The Devil Wears Prada or Julie & Julia, he can be found exploring the varied landscape and cuisine of Italy in his latest award-winning television venture, Searching for Italy.

It was part of my grandfather, whom we adored, and that made it the sweetest liquid ever to pass our lips. He has travelled through many countries, and it was interesting to hear about his encounters with numerous famous and not so famous chefs and restauranteurs, as well as his descriptions of the locales. He also provides an insiders view of the behind the scenes workings of movie sets and the actors, actresses, producers and directors he has worked with over his long career. Thursday: Veal cutlet sandwich or wedge with a small amount of butter and lettuce. This was in the days of affordable veal. The book started off well enough with memories of his mother in particular who cooked up a storm and growing up in an Italian American family. Many memories made me laugh because I also grew up in an Italian American family. In my family, however, my father worked two jobs to make ends meet and when things got tough, monetarily, my mom went out to work at a bank and rose in ranks as the head teller. Those were difficult times as we hardly saw our parents but my mother always, always “cooked up a storm” for her family. There are recipes! Many recipes. For pasta of various types. For ragout. For meat. For fish. Two very different styles of roast potatoes. He talks about the history of the Martini (yes, it must have a capital M). There is a lot of talk about cheese. I looooove cheese. My stomach rumbled.The answer is both. I’ve known for many years that food was something that I was gravitating toward. Certainly, after we made “ Big Night,” which was twenty-five years ago, and then, after I did “Julie & Julia,” I just became more and more interested in food. Whenever I went to restaurants, if it was a good restaurant, I would figure out a way to insinuate myself into the kitchen shamelessly, so that I could just sort of see the way they work, and what the setup was, and maybe ask how they made a certain dish. It was fascinating to me. It became all I could think about, even when I was acting. So I knew that that was who I was. But, as I started writing, I realized that it was even more of who I was, if that makes sense. This book is Stanley's life through food, from his childhood, as a young actor in NYC, through marriage and children, and even on movie sets. Stanley Tucci grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the kitchen table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the savory recipes and into the compelling stories behind them.​ Delving into memories of his childhood and revisiting cherished times with friends and family in his own words, Stanley explores how food has often been a meaningful centre-point of these interactions. Alongside the likes of anecdotes about Meryl Streep and tales of his courtship of his wife, Felicity Blunt, he includes a number of unmissable recipes, from the Negroni that became an internet sensation, to his family’s cherished tomato sauce. The resulting book is a reminder of how food is so often a portal to our past, a connection to our loved ones, and almost always present at life’s most precious moments. Travelling to Maine in New England, USA for a taste of the states, we learn about the Maine landscape, accent, humour and rules of being ‘from Maine’. And most importantly, that this is where you can get the best, fresh lobster.

As “Taste” progresses, it begins to lose some steam and the boiling pot settles (another pun!). Tucci’s tales become quite repetitive and read exactly the same: “I ate here. I liked this dish. Then I ate here with this person. I liked or hated that.” Boring! There isn’t much excitement to be shared or a thesis to these experiences. It is also at this point that Tucci begins to name drop chefs, other foodies, and his celebrity friends which are consequentially tedious and too typical Hollywood. This type of behavior is seemingly ‘below’ Tucci and has little place in “Taste” therefore weakening the essence of the memoir. So often I could picture Tucci with his sly wit and slightly curmudgeonly manner telling me these stories. (He loves poking fun at Meryl Streep, too.) Taste really was just an all-around fantastic reading experience that made me so hungry, and I, well, devoured it in no time. Filming in the UK, and later moving to (and currently living in) London, Tucci describes a some food in the UK as such: As Tucci explains in his new memoir, “ Taste: My Life Through Food,” his career has orbited the world of food and drink nearly from the start. The book is a decidedly un-Hollywood memoir that traces Tucci’s path from son (and grandson) of magnificently talented Italian American home cooks up through his most recent project, the CNN series “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy,” in which he takes on the role of culinary tour guide. He writes that the realization that food, and not acting, is the central passion of his life came in 2017, after he was diagnosed with a form of oral cancer, the treatment for which destroyed his taste buds and left him temporarily reliant on a feeding tube. “Food not only feeds me, it enriches me,” he writes. “All of me. Mind, body, and soul.” Tucci and I spoke recently via video chat, as part of The New Yorker Festival. Our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, touches on the process of writing a memoir, the importance of truth in art, and why terrible meals aren’t always bad. Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about his growing up in Westchester, New York; preparing for and shooting the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia; falling in love over dinner; and teaming up with his wife to create meals for a multitude of children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burned dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.In this book, Tucci shared memories of growing up in an Italian family that shared an immense love of food, and how his preferences were much more expansive than those of his peers, yet he still craved the junk foods of his youth.