"Cooking for Mr. Latte" by Amanda Hesser

[Nick]

"The real question is, what was I thinking?

"I should have established a set of guidelines long ago. That all potential boyfriends have to be willing to travel to the far reaches of a city to seek out that dark little bar that makes the best fried oysters; that they must like going to restaurants, expensive restaurants."

See full excerpt at SauteWednesday .

[nerissa]

Thanks for the link.

I have to agree with this, especially the ability to flawlessly open a bottle of champagne:

They must eat sushi and offal; they should know what a coat check is and know to tip the attendant, and they must! must! must! be able to open a bottle of Champagne.

[Suzanne F]

I remember some of that from when it first appeared in the Times, the whole Equal bit. Before the series slipped into trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator of hip young things. For which I still blame her editors, not her.

Can't say that I'll buy it, but I might want to read it. And thanks for reminding me of SauteWednesday -- that's a great site, and vastly expanded since the last time I had a look. Bruce, if you're looking in here, thumbs up!

[David Leite]

I recently interviewed Hesser for my Web site; I thoroughly enjoyed it. She's smart, funny, unguarded, and irreverent. She had some interesting things to say about the whole Amanda bashing, which she's remarkably unaffected by. I wasn't a fan, but after reading "Mr. Latte," as well as "The Cook and the Gardener" and a pile of her articles, I am now.

[Jason Perlow]

I had the opportunity to attend the Cooking for Mr. Latte launch party and meet Hesser in person on Tuesday.

She's a very nice, sweet person. She deserves to have the book be a success. I'm really looking forward to reading it because these are the unexpurgated and expanded versions of her columns, plus some new ones, and theres much more recipe content.

[vengroff]

I am a fan of The Cook and the Gardener. I also think Hesser's Times Magazine piece on the trip to Craft was just phenomenal. The one about the family trip to Italy, and filling up on the hotel buffet breakfasts and then taking a light lunch was great too. I agree, though, that in later installments things got a bit too sappy.

[Fat Guy]

If you go to Amazon.com and pull up the book, you can read the short review from Publishers Weekly.

"the text here comes across as shallow and lacking in wisdom . . . . the pervasive feeling of superficiality and calculation is compounded by the cutesy cartoons of Hesser as a sleek, big-eyed little doll."

Amanda Hesser's eGullet Q&A

[Suzanne F]

Vacation reading included Cooking for Mr. Latte, which turned out to be quite a nice book. Whoever wrote that Publisher's Weekly review must have been expecting -- and therefore reviewing -- a completely different book; of course it's lightweight. But it was not nearly as precious as the pieces in the Times Magazine (not all of them seem to be in the book, and I didn't remember reading some of the chapters before). Not that I much want to know more about Ms. Hesser, but she does show a capability for self-examination that was lacking from the Magazine installments. And the recipes are good. I may copy a few out before I return it to the library.

Just one quote that I rather like, in the headnote for Caramel Ice Cream: "It's a touch salty, which makes it addictive, and not a bit flabby, thanks to the sternness of toasted sugar."

[Jinmyo]

Not that I much want to know more about Ms. Hesser, but she does show a capability for self-examination that was lacking from the Magazine installments.

Well, that's good to hear.

[malcolmjolley]

I find her "field" pieces are much better than the Latte ones.

[fresco]

This is probably monstrously unfair, but I began to take against Ms. Hesser after a particularly vitriolic rant by my daughter about a Hesser piece in which she described how shamed she was by her grandmother, who insisted on ordering really uncool food while they were vacationing in Italy. Haven't seen much since to win me over.

[KNorthrup]

That's been my issue too. I like the writing itself but I'm not comfortable with a lot of the subject matter - changing or "retraining" loved ones.

[Suzanne F]

I consider that whole "Food Diary" in the magazine to be a very unfortunate use of her talents. And I still blame that on her editors, not on her directly. Not that I think she's the next MFK Fisher, but she can be a decent writer, and actually does know something about food.

Anyway, don't we have threads going on being embarrassed by dining companions?

[fresco]

You are probably right about editors having a big say in subject matter. They do not, as a rule, dictate point of view (that's chiefly what writers are paid for). And it is her point of view that gets up my nose, and, it would seem, many others.

[Suzanne F]

Actually, I think early in the book (introduction or acknowledgments or some such) she explains how the magazine articles came about, and what the editors told her they wanted. (Can't check, I took it back to the library this afternoon.) That's why I was so pleasantly surprised by the book. In the book she seems rather more direct and intelligent, even introspective and somewhat analytical. The voice is similar, but less breathless-and-wide-eyed; less prissy-pissy; more like a real person, not someone writing for a very specific audience of whom I am not a member (yuppie/GenX/whatever the youngsters with no taste but lots of pretensions are called these days).

I attended a panel she spoke on shortly after she got engaged. The Amanda I heard then, talking about her career to that point, the articles, and herself, all quite honestly, was much more in evidence in the book than the snippy "Amanda" of the magazine. I'm not saying you have to like her persona, but really, she's not what she seemed to be in those god-awful articles.

[fresco]

That all sounds encouraging, Suzanne. I'm open to surprises.

[Bux]

Suzanne, I've said much the same as you are saying about those articles, and I've been annoyed by a few other journalistic instances where she thought she was the voice of experience in areas where she just wasn't. Let's hope that's behind her. I think she's suffered as a food writer by the lack of good mentoring. We can blame it on her editors, or on her willingness to believe she was better equiped than she was, but we've been through all this before and it's time for us to move on and look at what she's been doing since those "god-awful articles." I'm glad to hear the book is more uplifting than the articles. I can't say as I will likely pick it up after reading many of the articles in the Times, but I'll read her new stuff with some hope.

[marie-louise]

I made her-actually, her mother's-Peach Tart recipe tonight from Cooking for Mr. Latte. Incredibly good; it is one of the best fruit desserts I've had in a long time. It is a very odd recipe; I made it more out of curiosity than anything. The crust, which contains oil, not butter or shortening, is mixed w/ a fork right in the pan, then patted out. The peaches go on the raw crust, then a sugar/flour/butter mixture is sprinkled on top.

I served it with the suggested whipped cream/creme fraiche topping.

[mags]

Somebody gave me Cooking for Mr. Latte, which was a very nice present, as it's engagingly written and contains some appealing-looking recipes. But somewhere along the way, the book started making me uncomfortable. And the more I read, the more uncomfortable I got.

The premise is that your sophisticated foodie-chick falls for a guy who is perfect in all ways but is a clod at the table. So, natch, she tries to change him. Along the way, she has similar episodes of trying to change the cloddish food-behavior of a few others, including her grandmother.

Now, we're not talking cloddish table-manners here. We're not talking about people who chew with their mouths open or feel up the waitresses or otherwise inflict their boorishness on others: we're talking about cloddish food CHOICES -- that is, people who inflict their theoretical boorishness on no one but themselves. Of what does this boorishness consist? Well, the Mr. Latte of the title is so named because he has the repellent habit of ordering coffee with MILK -- yes, MILK -- after 11 in the morning. And then he has the unmitigated gall to put Equal in it. As for Granny, her primary sin, so far as I can tell, involves eating large breakfasts while on a trip to Italy, thus spoiling her appetite for the kind of lunch Amanda believes she should eat.

And why does Amanda believe that Granny should eat a particular kind of lunch, or that her boyfriend (and later husband) should drink his coffee black after the clock strikes 11? I would be bothered enough if these beliefs were outgrowths of what Amanda likes: After all, the assumption that "Equal tastes disgusting to me, so it therefore tastes disgusting to everyone" betrays a kind of staggering narcissism, an assumption that "my" tastebuds are the perfect and ideal tastebuds, and that the world of food should therefore configure itself according to what tastes good to me.

But in fact, the narcissism doesn't stop there. Amanda doesn't really have any problem with the TASTE of Equal (or, presumably, with the taste of caffe latte drunk at 2 in the afternoon); when her boyfriend sweetens her cappucinno with it, rather than with sugar, she can't even tell the difference. Her problem is with the concept: Drinking a latte after breakfast is inherently WRONG, eating a hearty breakfast in Italy in inherently WRONG. They are (and here's the crux of my irritation).....uncool.

That's not the word she uses, of course. She just assumes that her readers understand why she shudders at her boyfriend's coffee preferences, in exactly the same way that 15-year-old girls understand why their friend is shuddering over a boyfriend's desperately tacky fondness for....jeez, whatever kind of music is considered tragically uncool these days, or for wearing The Wrong Kind of jeans. But here's the thing: First, 15-year-olds are notoriously self-absorbed. Everything associated with them, including other people, is just an extension of themselves, so if Amanda's boyfriend wears uncool clothes, Amanda is by extension uncool herself. All the other kids will point and laugh because Amanda is such a dork as to date a guy who wears Hushpuppies.

That kind of self-absorption (I think the shrinks call it boundary issues) is icky enough in a grown-up (hell, it's icky in 15-year-olds, but we just assume they'll grow out of it). But who's decided that Hushpuppies, or drinking coffee after 11, are wrong, uncool, unacceptable? It's not Amanda; her tastes don't enter into it at all. She's basically ceded control over what is and is not considered acceptably cool behavior to some mysterious Cabal of Cool out there in the ether. Again, it's exactly the same as 15-year-olds who don't even trust their own tastes enough to determine whether Hubert looks groovy in his Hushpuppies, but rely instead on an unwritten but completely unassailable code of behavior that all the cool kids know about: Thou shalt not wear beige suede shoes/Thou shalt not drink milk in thy coffee after 11 in the morning/Thou shalt eat small breakfasts even if thou art hungry first thing in the morning.

It' really bizarre. This woman -- and I'm sorry, Amanda, I know you read these boards occasionally -- was about 30 when she wrote this book. But her methods of judging other people seem stuck in 10th grade, and she doesn't even appear to be aware that these adolescent attitudes might be a little peculiar. I mean, there's no sense of "I know I'm a jerk for caring about these things, but for some stupid reason it drives me buggy when my boyfriend puts milk in his after-dinner coffee. Italians don't do it, so -- though he is not Italian -- I don't think he should do it either."

I haven't read the entire book, so maybe there's some kind of epiphany at the end. Maybe the book is really a subtle coming-of-age story, in which our heroine wises up to the fact that just because something (black coffee, big lunches) works for her does not, inherently, mean it is the ideal for anyone else. Maybe she even, gloriosky!, develops enough self-confidence to say "I don't care how Italians or some other de-facto hip population drink their coffee; I'm going to drink coffee the way I like it, and will allow others to do the same." I hope so. But I ain't holding my breath.

[NeroW]

Excellent post.

[snowangel]

I picked up this book at the library just after having read another autobiographical book -- The Apprentice by St. Jacques. After reading The Apprentice, I couldn't make it through Amanda's book.

[formerly grueldelux]

I would hope by book's end she'd become even a little self-aware. Maybe she'll realize she's been so obsessed with trying to collect all the "correct" things to think about food that she's never learned to think for herself or listen to her appetite. The latte business is classic. It's one thing to learn from cultures that have richer coffee traditions, and to strive to match that level of expertise and appreciation. And certainly when in Rome it would be almost uncivilized to not learn and pretty much follow local customs. But at home? With friends? In New York? Drink a latte whenever you damn please! Perhaps you can let us know if she comes around by the end of the book.

[mags]

certainly when in Rome it would be almost uncivilized to not learn and pretty much follow local customs.

I'm not even sure I agree with this, though I'm of two minds about it. Amanda's stated reason for getting peeved at her grandmother for eating hearty breakfasts while on a trip to Rome is that Granny should experience the rhythm and structure of a traditional ROman lunch, which she is unable to do if she's full from breakfast. But I don't entirely buy that, nor do I completely buy into the notion that one *should* follow all local customs when visiting.

On the one hand, we've probably all snickered -- ok, I've snickered -- at the hapless tourists demanding cheeseburgers at their Beijing hotels or steak sauce in restaurants in Florence. But how total does the immersion have to be to sidestep the claim of being "almost uncivilized"? My friend Ken recently returned from a long trip to Asia, where he ate (among many other things) live octopus. He said "the weirdest part" was when they frantically stuck their suckers to his teeth in an effort to avoid being swallowed. When I asked him why in God's name he had eaten live octopus, he said that this particular dish was an important part of the local culture, and that he wanted to experience it. Well, ok, but call me a weenie, point out that both Ken and Tony Bourdain have much bigger cojones than I do -- I ain't eating no live octopus. Does that make me 'almost uncilivized'?

Second -- and I know this is close to heresy on this board -- not everyone feels compelled to experience other cultures through their food. They travel for the art or the architecture or the crafts or the music or the language or the gardens or whatever. (I'm, not talking here about people who travel just to say they did it.) When lunchtime rolls around, what they want is something relatively unchallenging, so they can save their energies for waiting on line at the Ufizzi. They're not calling for ketchup or demanding fudge sauce for their gelati, but....they're not focused on lunch. They want a salad, or a plate of pasta -- the kind of lunch they're familiar with -- so they can get back to what they're really interested in. Does that make them uncivilized?

In the interest of coming clean, I'll acknowledge that I have been a Latte Transgressor. After a gorgeous, thoroughly Italian lunch with some friends in Italy, I ordered a latte to linger with, while they were finishing up the wine. Much meriment ensued, at my expense. Was I being uncivilized? I don't like black coffee.

So I guess I'm hijacking my own threat here. When traveling, how completely does one have to disregard one's own tastes and preferences in order to be regarded as something other than uncivilized, in order to lay claim to having experienced the culture through its food?

[ruthcooks]

Guess I'll be the judge who writes the dissenting opinion here...

I loved Amanda's book. To me, it was the perfect balance of "story" to recipes. Doesn't anyone get tongue-in-cheek? I felt she was gently chiding herself for her opinions all through the pages, maybe even making up a few to present a more interesting angle. And why shouldn't she be frustrated when her attempts to share something with her grandmother were thwarted? Her criticisms were lovingly delivered, not mean spirited.

Amanda's style bears some similarity to Laurie Colwin's in that they both write about life experiences and yet most people love Laurie's books. Laurie, however, seems unaware of her audience (e.g. talking about "all of us" rushing around with our young children as though everyone in the world were in her same stage of life), while Amanda seems quite aware of her age, sometimes a bit apologetic.

I don't like scholarly tomes or restaurant coffee table books or Bourdain's pig-guts-and-hangover harangues, but Amanda is my cup of tea. Light, breezy and amusing. To each her own.

[Fat Guy]

I make cappuccinos and lattes at all times of the day and night because I'm not good enough at making espresso to drink it straight. And I think the American preference for the milk-based beverages over the straight stuff may in part be connected to the near impossibility of getting a good shot of espresso at any restaurant in America -- whereas you can often get a passable cappuccino or latte.

In any event, what mags has written reminds me of this comment from the Publishers Weekly write-up of the Mr. Latte book:

.... the spirit of gentle appreciation that gave Hesser's first book such charm is missing. Indeed, the text here comes across as shallow and lacking in wisdom .... The pervasive feeling of superficiality and calculation is compounded by the cutesy cartoons of Hesser as a sleek, big-eyed little doll. Self-promotion has its uses, but perhaps it should also have its limits-though this book will decidedly get some play among the socially, and culinarily, ambitious.