Jeffrey Steingarten – Sheryl Kirby

The Book of Eating: Adventures in Professional Gluttony
Adam Platt, 2019

Adam Platt has been the restaurant critic at New York Magazine since 2000, when he took over from Gael Green. His own food background skews heavily to Asian cuisine as he spent his formative years in Japan and China, so while he has no formal cooking background, he has a deep understanding of the current food scene.

The early chapters of The Book of Eating read more like a very tasty auto-biography, detailing Platt’s childhood eating experiences in the US and abroad. These are engaging as part of the bigger story and especially for anyone interested in regional Asian cuisine, but I can see where and why some readers on Goodreads gave up near the beginning as Platt doesn’t really dish a lot of dirt on the NYC food scene, and he can tend to be repetitive with phrases that he presumes are witty (the term “boiled owl” appears far too often).

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Senses
328 Wellington Street West
416-935-0400

I’ve gone on record as saying that I don’t like foie gras. That was before I had the foie gras as prepared by Chef Patrick Lin at Senses.

Working on the “try it ten times” theory as espoused by Vogue food writer Jeffrey Steingarten, I continue to try foods that I’ve had bad experiences with in the hope that I’ll eventually learn to at least like them, if not love them. After trying the duo of foie gras on Senses new menu, consider me a convert. Chef Lin’s technique of offering the tasty liver both pan-seared and poached in Peking duck consommé is a testament to both an exquisite ingredient and his skill and creativity behind the stove.

A renovation of the space now sees the comfortably modern lounge graced with generous sofas and a reworked restaurant with better flow and ambiance due to the removal of a couple of seats and the addition of the wine wall that breaks up the space without breaking up the light. With warm wood floors, and a palette of chocolate, cream and gold, the space is relaxed and welcoming.

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