Eat Like a Man: The Only Cookbook a Man Will Ever Need

by Ryan D'Agostino, Tom Colicchio (Foreword), David Granger (Introduction)

So long, dude food. Most men who love food have a roasting pan and a decent spice rack, but they're still looking for that one book that has all the real food they love to eat and wish they could cook. Esquire food editor Ryan D'Agostino is here to change that with his unapologetically male-centric Eat Like a Man a choice collection of 75 recipes and food writing for men who like to eat, cook, and read about great food. It's the Esquire man's repertoire of perfect recipes, essays on how food figures into the moments that define a man's life, and all the useful kitchen points every man needs to know. Satisfying, sexy, definitive, and doable, these are recipes for slow Sunday mornings with family, end-of-the-week wind-down dinners with a lady, Saturday night show-off entertaining, poker night feeds, and game-day couch camping. Or, for when a man is just hungry.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking

224 pages, Hardcover

First published October 27, 2010

About the author

Ryan D'Agostino is Articles Editor at Esquire magazine and former Senior Editor at Money magazine. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, New York, the Wall Street Journal, Ski, the New York Times, and Budget Living, among others.

Reviews

[Peter Derk · Rating 1 out of 5]

Can't endorse this as a cookbook. After looking through the reviews below, I have to say that it doesn't appear that many other people do either, mostly praising the photography or the other writing.

The positive I took away was a piece of advice, a guy saying he keeps a pancake recipe in his wallet because it comes in handy every so often and everyone has the stuff for scratch pancakes. Sound advice.

But while the advice is okay, the book, like the magazine that birthed it, seems obsessed with putting forth this sort of lifestyle. There's a whole vibe to the thing where it feels like someone is whispering in your ear that these are the dishes men should cook. That cooking this way is part of the Esquire lifestyle. That you should hang onto that pancake recipe and you'll be one step closer to that lifestyle where you're hooking up with different girls all the time and may wake up at their houses, yet you make it classy somehow.

Well, I'm here to burst that bubble. Here are some shoes that they are suggesting I buy right now (5/25/2013):



For a measly $175 I can wear what appear to be small wicker baskets on my feet? Well, make sure to sign me up!

This is a classic Esquire move. They have normal suits that look good and cost somewhere in the low $5000's, and then a pair of short shorts that are salmon-colored with a tiny blue squirrel emblem stitched on the upper thigh. They treat food the same way, making it overly-complicated for very little actual gain. The recipe for coca-cola fried chicken? Sounded sort of good to me, and I was willing to bite. It was heavy, oily, and greasy. And if you're saying to yourself "Fried chicken is supposed to be like that" then I weep for you, friend, because you've never known true ecstasy.

There was another dish I tried, some kind of breakfast scramble that involved potato chips. I think the only reason I made it was because I looked at it and said, "There is no fucking way that's good." I was right, let me tell you. I threw out almost the entire thing. A full pan of food, in the trash. Is there anything worse than cooking a family-sized portion of something, and after all's said and done your reaction is, "Well, fuck. Now I have to make something to EAT"?

It's a decent read all right. But the recipes? Fuck that shit.

[Alexandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well this is hard to review. There ARE recipes in this book. Would I try any of them? No. Is this because I'm not a man and I don't "Eat Like a Man" as the title suggests? Also, no. If these recipes are how men eat, then I and most women I know, eat like men. But none of the recipes really seemed like anything I'd bother trying, mostly because I felt they were all trying too hard.

I understand that this is an Esquire cookbook, but my gosh there was so much writing. I did enjoy a few of the articles, but some of them seemed pointless. And is Esquire just a bunch of douche bags who write? Or am I missing something?

[Melanie Jenkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recipes were unique, healthy and full of non-processed ingredients. I loved it.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a fun book with great pictures in it. Whenever you make a title such as this, you already know you are alienating a group of people simply to push marketing to a very specific group...MEN! Heh heh I think the recipes look good...but some are nice. My family always leans towards books with pictures because it gives you a visual of what you want to see when it is all said and done. This book beautifully captures the meals. We made small changes in my household to the dishes but they turned out well. I like the book...but wish there were just a few more meals that spoke to me as a MUST PREPARE, and less of a THAT WOULD BE NICE! I think this is a great book to get from the library and just experiment with prior to purchasing...but I probably would recommend that for 80% of the cookbooks out there.

[Grace]

Simple, resourceful, & salivating.

Excited to try these out in the near future.

[Tina Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the recipes are appealing, but the text is too coarse

[Hannah Kost]

I frequently enjoy eating like a man, so when my favourite magazine published this cookbook I bought it for my boyfriend under the pretence of gift-giving and generosity. Merry Christmas to ME.

It is beautifully photographed - it could double as a coffee table book - and between recipes are cooking tips and wonderfully written essays about food. Culinary heavyweights like Mario Batali, Julia Child and Tom Colicchio lend their insights, ideas and cooking philosophies, while a section that breaks down classic drinks provides the ingredients for one badass cocktail hour.

We are cooking our way through this book, and while I'd recommend most of the recipes we've tried so far, you must EAT THE STEW. IT IS A DELICIOUSNESS KNOCKOUT.

[Lauren Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun read, with a lot of good-looking recipes. It's filled with essays and lists by the like of Top Chef's Tom Colicchio and other renowned chefs, about entertaining, grilling, etc. Definitely a high cholesterol cookbook!

[Krystal Hamlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I personally would not eat any of the recipes contained in this book, I found it very entertaining and informative. Commentary from celebrity chefs, cooking tips useful for anyone, and interesting charts and stories. Definitely a book of man food, as the title suggests!

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

May have to purchase this one.