Finding the Flavor We Lost: From Bread to Bourbon, How Artisans Reclaimed American Food

Food made by small mom-and-pop producers tastes great and is more spiritually filling, according to this lively but at times overripe history of the artisanal food movement. Restaurant critic and ex-chef Kuh (The Last Days of Haute Cuisine) surveys pioneering rebels against flavorless, pasteurized, shelf-life optimized American industrial food: a hippie couple who started making their own cheese on a Michigan farm in the 1970s; the founder of an artisanal bakery in Los Angeles who struggled to recreate old-style French bread recipes; chef Jean-Louis Palladin, who made a crusade of scouring the U.S. for regional ingredients to ship to his Washington restaurant; and Ann Arbor's iconic Zingerman's Delicatessan, a countercultural fount of food novelties made into a thriving business by a former anarchist. Kuh's accounts, mainly based on interviews with participants and his own reportage, shine when he delves into neophytes' labors in developing their recipes and immerses readers in cheese-making, beer-brewing, dough-raising procedures. He goes over the top in hymns to art-food's soulful authenticity and sublime expression of terroir, and sometimes swallows the industry's marketing whole. Still, Kuh's exuberant prose and rapt observation makes for delectable food porn. (June)