Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food
Masterly ... Robust ... If you don’t live within 100 miles of a real Chinese restaurant, or an H Mart, this book will not only entertain and instruct you — it might make you go mad with longing.
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Offers food tours to help people like me develop a deeper appreciation of the varieties of Chinese cuisine ... Dunlop brings the cuisines deliciously to life with her ample powers of description. This is a tool of the food writer’s trade, and she wields it expertly ... The text is erudite, too, dense and lively, enriched with history as well as fragments of archaic poetry and proverbs, the etymology of food terms, and playful examples of the cross-pollination of Chinese food and life ... Dunlop sets out to change those misguided views. The result is a joyously sensual, deeply researched and unabashedly chauvinistic read, a feast for anyone curious about how 1.4 billion people eat.
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An ecstatic compendium of her Chinese romance. Chapters are divided into banquet 'courses' ... The book is not without difficulties ... Dunlop’s China and her themes become more nuanced ... Dunlop brings a similar verve to the Chinese past. Her historical figures are sadistic and sexy.
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