A La Carte: Food & Fiction

Edit­ed by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard and Mar­i­ly Orosa
Anvil, 2007, soft­cov­er, 208 pages, ISBN 9789712718779
Win­ner of 2008 Gour­mand Award as the Best Food Lit­er­a­ture Book from the Philippines.
PALH has a few rare out-of-print copies, $65 each, free US ship­ping, email palhbooks@gmail.com

Feast of Philippine Food Stories!

Here are 25 won­der­ful food-relat­ed sto­ries! Each sto­ry is intro­duced by a relat­ed Fil­ipino recipe; the sto­ries are cat­e­go­rized like a cook­book: Breads, Appe­tiz­ers, Sal­ads; Soup, Rice, Main Dish­es, and Dessert.

Praise

“A menu of sto­ries to suit your every crav­ing! That’s A La Carte: Food & Fic­tion. This book fills a hunger in Philip­pine lit­er­a­ture for fan­ta­sy, hyper-real­i­ty, romance, mys­tery … but with a good mea­sure of culi­nary fla­vor­ing mixed in.” (Felice Pru­dente Sta. Maria, culi­nary her­itage advo­cate and writer)

“Here is a book guar­an­teed to sat­is­fy even the most dis­crim­i­nat­ing taste, but also to make read­ers hun­gry for more sto­ries, char­ac­ters, insights, and recipes. Fact, fic­tion, fan­ta­sy, and food mix in a feast for the mind, the heart, the palate, and the soul. There are many well-known writ­ers in the anthol­o­gy, but it is not so much who writes as what is writ­ten that makes this book a must-read, just as it is not so much the chef or the cook that makes a recipe to die for, but the dish itself. Enjoy the 25-course ban­quet.”  (Isagani R. Cruz for The Philip­pine Star)

“Books on food are quite pop­u­lar these days and we are glad that recent pub­li­ca­tions have gone beyond mere recipes to evoke what Proust called a ‘remem­brance of things past.’” (Ambeth R. Ocam­po, Chair­man, Nation­al Com­mis­sion for Cul­ture and the Arts; Chair­man, Nation­al His­tor­i­cal Institute)

 

Excerpt

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2018/01/short-story-by-cecilia-brainard-about.html

Book Review

Anna Bar­bara L. Loren­zo for Busi­ness World Week­ender, March 2007