Vacations are often intertwined with—or created solely from—memorable food and drink experiences. Publishers, realizing how many travelers build their itineraries around dining and imbibing, are capitalizing on this predilection.
Such books go beyond highlighting neighborhood bar crawls and recommending convenient post-theater eateries. Instead, they aim for something deeper, helping travelers connect to a place through its culinary culture and history.
“In the past year our travel books have overlapped quite a lot with food and drink, tying various ingredients or recipes to specific regions, times, and places,” says Cynthia Sherry, publisher of Chicago Review Press.
In The People’s Place: Soul Food Restaurants and Reminiscences from the Civil Rights Era to Today (coming in October from CRP), for instance, Dave Hoekstra leads readers through the so-called soul food corridor, from New Orleans and Montgomery, Ala., up to Chicago and Detroit, visiting the restaurants that served as community hubs during the racial tumult of the 1960s. The eateries he profiles, nearly all of which remain open for business, came to the rescue—not only with the comforting food they dished out but as safe havens for activists and influential African-Americans.
“These sorts of books are so much more than travel,” Sherry says. “In fact, to label them as such is to limit them. They’re local oral histories, capturing important eras, regions, and communities that people remember fondly, told through the food that was served then and is still served now.”
Other books this season mine the culinary-tourism vein. Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan’s Food Culture (Harper Wave, Oct.), by Matt Goulding of the Eat This, Not That! series, guides readers through seven regional Japanese culinary rituals, from Osaka’s street-food scene and the hearty bowls of ramen in Fukuoka to the exquisite sushi found in Tokyo, naming must-visit as well as must-avoid eateries. PW’s starred review noted that “Goulding’s gift for phrasing and razor-sharp prose elevate what could have been yet another rote travelogue into something much better.”
Taking in a much wider geographic territory than the more tightly focused books above, Mark Dredge’s The Best Beer in the World (Ryland Peters & Small/CICO, Oct.) offers a global tour through a malted lens, from Brazil’s Oktoberfest celebrations and Melboune’s finest pubs to the best place for a hangover breakfast in Dublin.
