Invitation to a Banquet: A History of Chinese Food [Paperback]

Finalist for the 2024 IACP Award for Literary or Historical Food Writing Fuchsia Dunlops masterly new book, Sweeping&Chinese food has long been dismissed by outsiders as salty, unhealthy and made from creepy ingredients. In Fuchsia Dunlops rapturous This book is an erudite joy that makes you yearn to taste the delights Dunlop describes. Her sensory writing is so vivid that I felt I was actually there with her in the food markets of China. Dunlop has written a 400-plus-page book about a cuisine that, by her own estimation, doesnt much interest westerners. Its a decision born of the same confidence and originality that has made her such a successful recipe writer (including for the FT). Shes also a brilliantly effective describer of things, conjuring the 'wet crunchiness' of a chickens foot and the 'skiddy' texture of duck intestines in this exciting, non-linear history. In 30 years of exploring and documenting the country, [Dunlop] has done for China what Elizabeth David did for Mediterranean food and Claudia Roden did for the Middle East&Dunlops desire to educate and enlighten finds its fullest expression in [Dunlop's] latest is one of her most ambitious works to date. . . . While the book brims with descriptions of delectable feasts, this is more of a historical deep-dive than it is a travelog. Above all, Dunlop wants her readers to approach Chinese food on its own terms and to challenge common misconceptions about it. She explores a time before rices dominance, when emperors offered sacrifices to Lord Millet; why the roots of Japanese sushi lie in Chinese Dunlop makes a compelling case for the superiority of Chinese cuisine, but in a delighted and expansive rather than chauvinistic way. . . . She makes an equally compelling case that what Westerners think of as Chinese food, meaning what most can find at their local takeaway, is neither inauthentic nor wrong. Instead, it is a diasporic offshoot that reflects local tastes but is about as representativls4