The Humble Gourmand

British transplant Gina Mallet has written a series of essays that form the book, Last Chance to Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World. It explores lots of territory — part memoir, part food religion, part British rant and part historical recipes — all focusing on favorite foods from her life in Britain, Connecticut and most recently while writing for The Toronto Star and National Post newspapers in Canada.

It’s mostly great to hear Mallet’s many food perspectives in these essays. She devotes a whole chapter to the humble egg and how it has been industrialized and vilified by “health experts” on flimsy, often erroneous links to bad human LDL cholesterol. To Mallet’s mind taste is the first victim in the health scares that she sees plaguing North Americans (yet she somehow ignores the European penchant against genetically modified foods!) However, industrial growers don’t always take a beating – surprisingly Mallet swoons for full-flavor hydroponic tomatoes over often exalted organic heirloom varieties. August Escoffier and Elizabeth David are her food saints because to Mallet taste trumps all!

The chapter on the egg and especially the essay about how French Brie was ruined as it became an international hit are where this book really shines. The holy grail for Brie is the embedded thin white line of chalk that is the connoisseur’s passion. It’s wonderful to hear how her family lived on a big English estate just after WWII and then moved to a flat just above Harrod’s in London – the hotbed of all things fromage. Mallet’s description of Harrod’s food stalls in the 1950s and how pasteurization of milk has robbed dairy of much of its unique and living flavors is a real pleasure-read. And her illicit dealings to get unpasturized cheeses under-the-counter in Canada and recollections of adventures with taboo horse meat are a hoot.

Mallet’s summary of the sad state of Washington apples (nits: somehow she puts Spokane geographically south of apple-growing hub Wenachee, and then ignores the powerhouse British Columbia Okanogan growers just to the north) offers an interesting story of the finest of tree fruits, which concedes the market to cheap and flavorless Chinese apple imports in the same five tired varieties.

The main drawbacks of this book are some of Mallet’s absolute positions, which seem a bit foolish. Mallet rants in that old-fashioned British way that communicates what is obvious to her and ignores all other points of view. Luckily she doesn’t enter this mode full-boar until well into the last chapters – mostly ranting on fish for some reason, all the while slamming environmentalists, fish farmers, and consumers equally while pretty much exalting the delicate flavor of Dover Sole above all else. Salmon and tuna lovers beware — these fishes are not worthy.

All in all, Mallet, gets it mostly right in these essays when she paints pictures of past foods and food preparations that focus on the taste experience missing from so much food today. This is a great summer read for foodies who want to hear nostalgia mixed in with an exaltation of taste.

Last Chance to Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World

By Gina Mallet
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (August 2004)
Hardcover $25.95
ISBN-10: 0393058417

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