Reading America: The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine

I’m a cliché. I admit it. No matter how many other America-related books I read, Travels with Charley remains my favorite. But, this week, a young upstart gave Mr. Steinbeck a little butt pat, a little hey I’m here on my yeah, I like this one list.

Now, The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine is not new new new. I know that. Please don’t yap at me about how I’m acting like I’ve made some major discovery on my own. I admit to being unfashionably late on this one. But, as much as the magazine world I work in demands it, I’ve never been a big believer in it’s got to be new to be good (or to be written about) so, expect to see some aging titles get the spotlight here.

All too simply, “Scavenger” is the story of the author’s year-long quest to go around the U.S. hunting and gathering the ingredients necessary for a 45-course meal prepared from an old French cookbook. When I plucked “Scavenger” off my bookshelf, I knew enough about it to believe that I was in for a, most likely, good to really good foodie-ish read and that I’d learn plenty about hunting. I hadn’t really thought about the travel side of it, the place side of it. It was a forest/trees thing. Yet, place is exactly what author Steven Rinella serves up best (along with a you-are-there description of frog-gigging and plenty of humor to offset, well, the frog-gigging). In the book, he often talks about “glassing” the land to look for animals. That’s what I felt like I was doing as I read—I was taking a good close scan of a huge swath of land and figuring out where I wanted to go and what I needed to do next.

First up on my dream to-do list from the book: Meet the Eel Man.

So, did you read it? What did you think?

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