review of dwight garner’s “the delicatessen upstairs”

This short book reads like the author’s ideal last meal: a lengthy opening with two martinis and antipasta, a savory and meaty entree in the middle, and an abrupt ending with no digestif or dessert. A full quarter of the book ticks past before the oven opens for Chapter 1, a set-up sequence a bit overdone. But once the meals arrive (the chapters are named Breakfast, Lunch, Shopping, Interlude, Drinking, and Dinner), the book steams with fun and many laugh-out-loud moments, recollections, and quotes from articles and books.

Consisting of semi-autobiographical anecdotes of food in life and literature, it’s name dropping of authors, chefs, and titles is worth the experience (and owning a hard copy) just to dig deeper into the ingredients. However, the book falls apart at the end as the maître d’ suddenly dumps a pot of hot coffee in your lap and then politely waves goodbye as the ambulance takes you and your privies to the emergency room. Garner explains the short ending, blithely focused on food, sex, and death, as a dislike of dessert. Leaving the juicy culinary connections to sex and death in the kitchen seems more like an oh-shit-this-book-is-due-by-contract-and-i’m-out-time airy mousse than the heavy cream on dense chocolate brownie it deserved. The shortness of the book (a mere 129 pages; the menu at Denny’s is longer) further supports my hypothesis.

Regardless, as long as you don’t mind hot coffee steaming your nether regions, this a book worth reading if you like reading and eating. You’re just gonna have to stop in at a Whataburger on the way home after you’re finished.