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The Gastronomical Me

by M.F.K. Fisher, David Bullen (Designed by)

4.26 of 5 stars 4.26 · rating details · 1,324 ratings · 133 reviews

In 1929, a newly married M.F.K. Fisher said goodbye to a milquetoast American culinary upbringing and sailed with her husband to Dijon, where she tasted real French cooking for the first time. The Gastronomical Me is a chronicle of her passionate embrace of a whole new way of eating, drinking, and celebrating the senses. As she recounts memorable meals shared with an assor...more

Paperback, 272 pages

Published October 10th 1989 by North Point Press (first published 1943)

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Oct 09, 2012 Jeanette rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-memoir, books-about-food, nonfiction, four-star-nonfiction, europe-and-british-isles

"The baker had a fight with the chef soon after we left port, and the barber took over all the pastry making..."

Mary Frances had the perfect recipe for blending food writing and autobiography. Inimitable, and such a product of her era. Of all her books, this is the one most suitable for non-foodies. The Sensual Me might have been a better title. Food and drink (LOTS of drink) do get a lot of coverage, but that's only a slice of the book, not the whole pie. Along with the gastronomical, she offer...more "The baker had a fight with the chef soon after we left port, and the barber took over all the pastry making..."

Mary Frances had the perfect recipe for blending food writing and autobiography. Inimitable, and such a product of her era. Of all her books, this is the one most suitable for non-foodies. The Sensual Me might have been a better title. Food and drink (LOTS of drink) do get a lot of coverage, but that's only a slice of the book, not the whole pie. Along with the gastronomical, she offers up impressions visual, tactical, aural, and visceral.

The chapters are loosely connected snapshots of her life, roughly chronological but with large blocks of time unaccounted for.
She begins in 1912 at age four, with her first memory of an irresistible taste -- the foam on top of a kettle of strawberry jam. On through boarding school and her first live oyster, followed by a college gluttony phase, and then Dijon, France as a newlywed. Those early years in France brought the discovery that food was something to be relished and treated with reverence, and it set the course for her life as a gourmand and food writer. [A big chunk of this part of the book was lifted wholesale and plopped into a much later memoir, Long Ago in France, which I read a few months ago. Skip that one. This one's better.]

After they leave Dijon things get a little hazy, and I suspect some deliberate vagueness. Mary Frances started a new relationship while in the process of divorcing her husband. She never explains exactly how things developed between herself and Chexbres, the new man. They seem to have led a near-idyllic life in Switzerland until the coming war forced them to flee in the 1930s. She nursed him through a lingering illness until he died, and was on her own at the close of the book.

She ends the book in the early 1940s with a maddeningly cryptic story of a trip to Mexico featuring a mariachi musician called Juanito. She was only in her mid-thirties when this book was published in 1943, and I got the feeling from the way it ended that she might have been planning to pick up where she left off at some time far in the future.

I've tried to read some of M.F.K.'s other books which are devoted strictly to food. For me, they can't measure up to this one. Her gift for observation and her dry and often mordant wit are best suited to these first-person reminiscences.
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May 16, 2013 spoko rated it 5 of 5 stars

Really great book. The first few chapters and the last few, especially, were absolutely wonderful. Which is not to say that it drug in the middle—it really didn't. If it had all been as good as those chapters on either end, it would have been a nearly perfect book. Still, I loved it as it was.

The book is a memoir, told almost exclusively through descriptions of food, eating, etc. In case you're not familiar with MFK Fisher, that's the kind of writing she does—it's about food, but it's about so m...more

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Aug 19, 2011 Sonia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Loved this. Thanks to Connie for her Goodreads review, because I would never have picked it up otherwise. Ridiculously good writing about growing up, love, the Second World War, loss, travel, and food, etc. and nice loose approach to memoir. Agree with Connie that some of the early chapters are particularly lovely. On being alone with his daughters for a car trip without their mother, her father "saw us for the first time as two little brown humans who were fun." There's an incredible chapter ab...more

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Dec 06, 2010 April Ives rated it 4 of 5 stars

Let me begin by saying that I gained at least five pounds over the course of reading this book! I also consumed a few extra bottles of wine and the only thing missing was the extraordinary food that is not usually available on the income of college students. Although I had to settle for cheese and crackers with my wine, MFK Fisher’s collection of essay seated me next to her on this trip back in time.
Fisher’s writing style is charming and quite picturesque. She describes her surroundings with eas...more

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Jan 20, 2009 Melissa rated it 5 of 5 stars

A treat for anyone who sees food more than something just to satiate hunger and who realizes that pivotal life experiences often occur around a shared meal, formal or not. I'll let Ms. Fisher speak for herself when she responds to the question of why she writes about food and hunger rather than wars and love: "There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine is drunk." Or, "I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, with my brain and my...more

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Mar 20, 2010 Mara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: kitchen-table-mfa

Fun reading while fasting.

So what I didn't expect is that she would be so funny, but in that way that people look at me surprised after knowing me for a while, and say, with a slight question in their voices, "You're funny?" And it's not funny for funny's sake, it's part of her enviable self-assurance and the ability to focus on a good meal when the world is going to pieces and her sureness of how things should be ("I discovered, there on the staidly luxurious Dutch liner, that I could be very f...more

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May 09, 2011 Constance rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Constance by: Sue Shin (goodreads welcomes you anytime with open arms Sue!)

Wonderful book; excellent writing. Best enjoyed slowly and piece by piece (yes, like food). The beginning essays, about being young and discovering food and life and what it all means, are absolutely lovely. 4.5 stars.

Two caveats: Food seems a bit of an afterthought in some of the essays, which was disappointing for a reader (such as myself) who was promised a theme and therefore was always wanting food to take on a Romantic symbolic role and tie everything together. Also, M.F.K.’s writing has a...more

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Feb 19, 2008 Andrea Conarro rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: food-books

I don't know how I stumbled upon MFK Fisher, but now that I have, I don't know how I missed her. She is a premier food writer, and a must-read for anyone who loves foodie-type books. This one is about her early food years.

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Sep 14, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

I certainly understand why M.F.K. Fisher is so celebrated by food writers. I devoured this book and enjoyed every element of it. Fisher's food memories come off as both timeless as well as incredibly reflective of the time and place in which they happened. You get a brilliant sense of what it was like to be a foodie -- albeit a very privileged one -- in the early 20th Century, and how earning and obtaining such a status was wholly dependent on spending lots of time in Europe (France in particula...more

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Aug 18, 2010 Linda rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: roar

My first foray into food lit. Seriously - I hate reading/talking/listening about food. I just like eating food. But then this turned out to not really be a "foodie" (I also hate that word) thing, and so I was actually liking it. But then, sigh. It's really disjointed. Like, basically it seems like you're reading a bunch of blog entries. Which is great for blogs, less so for books. I wanted editorial cohesiveness so badly, and I got none, but she does have some great passages and interesting idea...more

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Jun 25, 2011 meeners rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to meeners by: Chelsea Szendi

Shelves: autobiography

there is no greater feeling of bliss than falling in love with a book two pages in. love at first read! SWOON!

edit: it is only too tempting to use food metaphors to describe this book ("to be savored like a _________," "rich and mellow as a ___________ wine") but i am trying to fight the good fight and resist the urge. this memoir was first published in 1943 and contains more than enough unsettling moments of blind privilege, but it is also a testament of clear insight and honesty and an astonis...more

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Oct 12, 2010 Courtney Cochran rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Gastronomical Me is easily one of the most profound books I've read. Deeply moving in its portrayal of war in the way of Atonement, but with lots and lots of joie de vivre mixed in for good measure, it's about as real as it gets. And, I should add, balanced: Fisher's book exposes both sides of humanity - the evil and the gracious - and, also in equal amounts, the blessings and curses fate doles out during one's lifetime. She doesn't mince words, doesn't protect you from life's realities, but...more

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Mar 02, 2008 Erin rated it 2 of 5 stars

To create a truly excellent dish quality ingredients must be used, certainly, but more important are the skilled hand, the discerning palate, and the acquired wisdom of a good cook. M.F.K. Fisher was just such a cook, not only in her various kitchens, but as she stirred and seasoned the events in her life, and most of all perhaps when she served her literary concoctions to the widest range of guests she had ever encountered, the reading public. It is in this spirit that she wrote The Gastronomi...more To create a truly excellent dish quality ingredients must be used, certainly, but more important are the skilled hand, the discerning palate, and the acquired wisdom of a good cook. M.F.K. Fisher was just such a cook, not only in her various kitchens, but as she stirred and seasoned the events in her life, and most of all perhaps when she served her literary concoctions to the widest range of guests she had ever encountered, the reading public. It is in this spirit that she wrote The Gastronomical Me.
In a book that begins with her childhood and goes on to span 29 years of her life, Fisher writes about her appetites both culinary and spiritual. The cook in the kitchen is analogous to the individual in the wide world, buffeted by steam, awash in strange smells, burnt by haste. And when the cook’s work is done the guest at the table carries the analogy, as partaker of the sweetness and bitterness of life. So her tranquil childhood passes in a series of vignettes that include the summer ritual of canning, a roadside dinner with her little sister and father, a casserole disaster, a review of a few household cooks, and finally a cross country train ride (as seen from the dining car of course) and ends with a flourish in a New York city restaurant. There she orders, for the first time, under the tutelage of an uncle, a more adventurous dinner than ever before. Of course this is just the appetizer, her marriage to Al is washed down with strong Burgundy, followed by her growing familiarity with rich French cooking, and the simple suppers she cooked in a series of her first tiny kitchens. The main course is Swiss, grand dinners at home with Chexbres, visiting friends and parents and siblings, fresh produce from the garden, more good wine, some traveling and truite au bleu, all exquisitely seasoned with nostalgia because of course, no feast can last forever and the war is coming and Chexbres will fall ill, lose his leg, and soon be dead. Destruction then, is the bitter digestif which is followed by a plane to Mexico to visit her brother and sister in Jalisco. The final chapter is almost penitent, a response, perhaps, to gluttony.
In her best moments Fisher transposes the yearnings of the heart over the hungers of the stomach. In her Foreward she writes: “I tell about myself, and how I ate bread on a lasting hillside, or drank red wine in a room now blown to bits, and it happens without my willing it that I am telling too about the people with me then, and their other deeper needs for love and happiness.” The implication is that all that is nourishing and sustaining is ultimately perishable, that pleasure is ephemeral, and should therefore be savored and shared like a good meal.
Throughout The Gastronomical Me we revisit two tableaux: Fisher at a table with her intimates, and Fisher dining alone. “…I taught myself to enjoy being alone” she assures us, though we might well wonder how this happened, since the development of her character is often obscured by the descriptions rising like delicious aromas from the dishes lovingly placed before us. The conceit of the book is that the development of her palate signifies the development of character. The metaphor is appealing but the former is not interchangeable with the latter, and Fisher, knowing this, distracts the reader from more profound revelations by throwing a dinner party just when she seems the closest to a personal revelation or when the affairs of the world threaten to encroach on the garden, the wine cellar, or the restaurant. We catch a glimpse of fascists with a prisoner on the train, but wasn’t the lunch delicious, and how kind of the waiters to warn us about the freshly spilled blood on the platform. It is not as if Fisher is burying these things within the narrative, the blood is there, but it is sometimes dismaying that, being left to watch all this from the windows of the dining car as it gathers speed leaving the station we are still expected to profess an interest in the food and the charming company. There are great moments when Fisher herself shines through, and we see that she is more than just the hostess at the banquet of her life, that she has a profound sense of the location of that banquet and the circumstances outside of her own charmed circle, as when she writes in the last chapter:
“…I knew all there was for me to know about Jaunito. And what I knew made me sorry that any of us had ever gone to that village, and ashamed that we were so big, so pale, so incautiously alive.”
The remorse she finally feels, upon recognizing that traveling around and tasting new foods does not a moral person make necessarily is hard won, and the construction of the book lends credence to her realization. Before WWII Americans with the privilege to do so could, we imagine, travel Europe sampling the local cuisine while remaining blissfully ignorant of any sense of responsibility or moral injustice. After the international loss of innocence that marked the middle of the 20th century that blissful ignorance would have been harder to maintain, and travel in Latin American would have certainly proved challenging to anyone hoping to linger in that charmed state. In this way the personal tragedy of Chexbres’ death is situated in the book in such a way that it almost serves as a stand in for the destruction and desolation that was happening in Europe at that time on a much grander scale. The development of her palate, then is made to signify development of character since the conceit of the book is that the latter is a metaphor for the former. though we might wonder how this was accomplished since her character does not seem to develop as much as her palate does.

and that therefore a well-prepared course of happiness should be savored and shared because otherwise it will spoil.

circumstantial. The development of her discerning palate then, the cultivation of skilled hands, the acquisition of a cook’s wisdom

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Feb 24, 2008 Ammie rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is, in theory, a book about food. But a lot of it's not actually about food. There's a lot of talk about A) alcohol, B) Random events in the author's life, and C) traveling on boats. But for all that, I liked most of it fairly well. MFK Fisher wrote about food in the 30's and 40's (at least in this particular book) shamelessly. Apparently, initial readers thought her essays must have been written by a man because the style was so forthcoming. Her writing is, for me, very reminiscent of comf...more

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Jan 07, 2008 Christina rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: foodies, fans of ruth reichel, ex-patriots in france

Shelves: non-fiction

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Aug 19, 2007 Lesa rated it 3 of 5 stars

My first MFK Fisher. I have been wanting to read her since 198something, when Julie Burchill, in one of her essays in The Face, mentioned her and how brilliant she was. Some 20-odd years later, I've finally done it. A thoughtful gift for a trip to France. To read this book, a memoir through food, much of it taking place in the Dijon region, while on holiday in France, made my summer eating all the more vivid. The highlights were on detours to Spain and Switzerland, actually. In the Extremadura r...more

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Apr 04, 2009 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: food, non-fiction

I love to read food writing: both non-fiction and fiction. I am almost ashamed to admit that I have not read anything by M.F.K. Fisher before now. Many regard her as one of the best food writers.

Fisher's The Gastronomical Me is a collection of autobiographical essays that cover time from 1912 through 1941. In 1929 Fisher got married and sailed with her husband to France were she tasted her first real French food and started down the road to being a true foodie. Fisher talks about her first exper...more

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Jan 05, 2012 Geni rated it 4 of 5 stars

The unusual food memoir was recommended by an unknown, and when I picked it up recently, I wondered about even starting it. I am glad I did. I didn't know someone could write so well about her experiences with food and life. Her voice is remarkable and she makes her experiences amazingly interesting in a most subtle way. In addition, since author Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was born the same year as my mother, I was interested in her essays as social history.

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Aug 04, 2008 Dorothy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Few readers have heard of M.F.K. Fisher. She’s often been relegated to the nebulous “food writing” category, stuck in some dusty corner with unworthy companions such as Jamie Oliver and Rachel Ray. It’s a crying shame, really. She has a wonderful, witty voice, and The Gastronomical Me is a prime example of her beautiful prose and her uncanny ability to convey raw human emotion in a few simple sentences. Food writing seems incidental to this book, because Fisher spoons it out in very small portio...more

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Jul 26, 2007 Rae Pagliarulo rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who eats too fast.

next time you sit down to eat, shut up and think about what you're doing. think about where the food comes from, and what happened in the world that made it okay for it to be prepared this way, and think about the last time you had anything on the plate, and what THAT day was like, and who was there with you, and how it affected your life, or not...

now imagine living your life that way, humming constantly with the awareness that food is not just necessity, it's history and love and beauty and ju...more

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Mar 06, 2011 Michael Seidel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: food-writing

A collection of delicious essays. The stand out was the essay about the peach pie and whipped cream chilled in the stream... good god, you could literally just taste the pie. Most of the essays have Fisher's characteristic dry, biting wit, especially the ones about the characters she meets on her Atlantic crossings. The final essays read like a cross between Paul Bowels and Suddenly, Last Summer, pretty darkly strange.

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Mar 11, 2010 Rebecca rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-memoir, yum, read2010

I thought I had read Fisher, in snippets and tributes, with the way that she haunts modern food writers (worse than Proust.) But this... I feel like starting over, just to keep each perfect sentence of this memoir close at hand, from the first line of strawberry jam innocence to the spiritual hunger of the last line. Just to drink in the strength of her character (probably best served with a stiff drink.)

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Jun 12, 2011 Melissa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Amazing! A beautifully written piece of nonfiction. Fisher recounts her life stories through food and cooking. Although this was written just after WW II, it's timeless and still relevant. She explores human emotions and behaviors through our basic need for sustenance and our desire for pleasure. I can't wait to devour (pardon the pun) the rest of her work!

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Jun 11, 2011 Chelsea Szendi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs

I read this book right on the heels of the memoirs of Pablo Neruda. It was a tough act to follow, but Fisher absolutely shattered me. She is as deft with her words as she portrays herself to be with a knife. Fischer's life flows like the background accompaniment to the meals she eats - deliberately, voluptuously.

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Mar 16, 2013 Rose Destin rated it 5 of 5 stars

MFK Fisher is my all time fave. She made me want to live life a certain way when I was young and I still hold that ideal even if I don't always meet it. Food is such an important part of life but not just for eating, of course, and that's her take on the beauty and meaning present in all aspects of life.

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Nov 30, 2012 Dorothy rated it 5 of 5 stars

I truely enjoyed this book. It makes food an adventure. Why not have fun with it, we got to eat don't we. Might as well make it an adventure. I just loved the way she talks about the food. The way she sees it as a shared experience, a bonding experience when you eat with someone.

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May 02, 2009 Krista rated it 3 of 5 stars

This series of essays was interesting, and full of rich descriptions. My complaint is in the disjointedness of the essays (I mean within a single piece, not the cohesiveness of the collection) and to be honest, most of them were quite depressing. Still, I'm hoping to read at least one more of her books.

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Jan 17, 2009 Marissa Pineda rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love MFK Fisher. I discovered her work in a "foodie" book group started by our local library a couple years ago. She writes about food and cooking and eating in such a way that makes it more than a mundane experience. Who knew there was so much to say about food?

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Jan 03, 2009 Tora rated it 5 of 5 stars

I cannot name a single person who shouldn't read this book. The short story format makes it easy to pick up, while universal yet all too human themes of love and hunger make the writing a balm for what ails you.

A few of the stories were familiar to me from another collections, but reworked in a way that gave me the feeling she was trying to distill another kind of truth by telling it in another way-- one more immediate and unflinching than a more "prosy" version of the story. Do give it an enjo...more

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Dec 30, 2010 kasia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Every bit as wonderful as I'd hoped. It kind of reminded me of Kleinzahler's Cutty, One Rock, in terms of style. But with more food. Such a beautiful book.
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About M.F.K. Fisher

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was a prolific and well-respected writer, writing more than 20 books during her lifetime and also publishing two volumes of journals and correspondence shortly before her death in 1992. Her first book, Serve it Forth, was published in 1937. Her books deal primarily with food, considering it from many aspects: preparation, natural history, culture, and philosophy. Fisher...more

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Quotes from The Gastronomical Me

“Like most humans, I am hungry...our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it...” — 7 people liked it

“(We loved Mother too, completely, but we were finding out, as Father was too, that it is good for parents and for children to be alone now and then with one another...the man alone or the woman, to sound new notes in the mysterious music of parenthood and childhood.)

That night I not only saw my Father for the first time as a person. I saw the golden hills and the live oaks as clearly as I have ever seen them since; and I saw the dimples in my little sister's fat hands in a way that still moves me because of that first time; and I saw food as something beautiful to be shared with people instead of as a thrice-daily necessity.” — 4 people liked it

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