The Table Comes First

The Table Comes First is at once a celebration of the rituals of eating - the scene of families, friends, lovers coming together, or breaking apart, the core of our memories - and an exploration of the extraordinary transformations that our notion of what makes food 'good' has undergone.

Taking the reader from the birth of the restaurant in 18th century France to the molecular Meccas of Barcelona The Table Comes First is the delightful beginning of a new conversation about the way we eat now.

“'Like the Argentinian [Lionel Messi], Gopnik is always worth watching' Telegraph.”

Telegraph
'He may be the best food writer there is. He's certainly the most thoughtful - the most philosophical' Evening Standard. Evening Standard
'Extraordinary' GQ. GQ
'Brilliant ... flamboyant and greedy' Independent. Independent
'Gopnik, a brilliant writer on the New Yorker, makes a passionate case for the centrality of the table to our lives, and the binding force of sitting down to the 'nightly miracle' of dinner' Sunday Times. Sunday Times
'Gopnik writes beautifully ... this is a lovely history of the way we think about all sorts of things' William Leith. William Leith
'His writing here is a high-glazed wonder' Kathryn Hughes, Guardian. Guardian
'These are personal essays in the fullest sense of the word, sieving the big subjects of the book's subtitle - family, France, food - through one man's well-furnished mind' Guardian. Guardian
'He may be the best food writer there is. He's certainly the most thoughtful - the most philosophical' Evening Standard. Evening Standard

Adam Gopnik has been writing for the New Yorker since 1986. He is a three-time winner of the National Magazine Award for Essays and for Criticism, and the George Polk Award for magazine reporting. From 1995 to 2000 he lived in Paris; he now lives in New York City with his wife and their two children.

On the morning of May 24 1942, Jacques Decour, a member of the French resistance, faced death at the hands of his Nazi captors. Jacques' last few hours were dominated by thoughts of his best-loved meals. Seventy years later, a dessert intended to recreate the emotions experienced by Lionel Messi after scoring a goal is served in one of Catalonia's leading restaurants. In a sparkling tour through gastronomy and its history, acclaimed New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik teases out the connections between these two events. Weaving in family memoir together with wisdom gleaned from figures as varied as Keith Richards, Ian Fleming and Fergus Henderson, The Table Comes First explores the extraordinary transformations our relationship with the food we put on our plates has undergone.

The Table Comes First is at once a celebration of the rituals of eating - the scene of families, friends, lovers coming together, or breaking apart, the core of our memories - and an exploration of the extraordinary transformations that our notion of what makes food 'good' has undergone. Taking the reader from the birth of the restaurant in 18th century France to the molecular Meccas of Barcelona The Table Comes First is the delightful beginning of a new conversation about the way we eat now.

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