Terri's review
Eat This!: 1,001 Things to Eat Before You Diet by Ian Jackman
This book is best read while eating, although it may make you disappointed with your meal! The chapter organization made sense but the little boxes and pull-out quotes scattered within the chapters bothered me as they didn't seem to be necessarily worthy of a highlight to me, and sometimes they weren't really related to the chapter topic. I was pleasantly surprised at the very brief mention of the Happy Joe's pizza chain in the Midwest (which originated in my hometown) however I would argue that they are NOT known for their Canadian bacon & sauerkraut pizza but more their taco pizza. The sections on scrapple and burgoo were fascinating (who knew how versatile squirrel meat could be?) but the sections on chilli were boring and impossible to summarize in one chapter (worthy of whole books really). It's an exhaustive sampling of eats across the U.S. but, of course, never complete. This book did compel me to order a sampler box of chips and snacks though from Detroit!
I'm glad you liked the book (at least kind of!). I actually liked the sidebars, but, yeah, sometimes they seemed a little disruptive to the flow of the narrative.It was def. a New York-o-centric book, though, so no surprises that he didn't quite get it right when he was in the hinterlands. I felt he gave Chicago short shrift, too.
My favorite thing, I think, was his chapter on New York pizzas! I really want to sample them all.
