Customer Reviews
Delightful and Delicious - By: , 15 Oct 2004 
Matthew Fort's epic scooter ride up the thigh-boot of Italy is a truly delicious read. Every aspect of the fascinating & varied Italian life he encountered is amusingly reflected upon in his lightly erudite prose. I thought his acknowledgement of feeling homesick (unlike Thesiger et al) was particularly endearing & the description of his amateurish Vespa riding in Naples most entertaining.Mr Fort was the restaurant critic for The Guardian, a foodie professional, but the gusto with which he describes the various meals he was presented with en route shows a boyish enthusiast peeping through the culinary afficionado. The recipes, which are added to each chapter-ending, are splendidly simple but totallly mouthwatering.What Mr Fort has managed to do is deftly mix an amusing travel diary, rich with incident & character, with a gourmet's guide to the regional idiosyncrasies of Italian cooking. YUMMY!
food from fort - By: , 10 Aug 2004 
Are you, like me, tired of alll these remorselessly microscopic, one-theme books? You know, three times as much as you ever wanted to know about socks, & their previously unregarded, unrevealed & crucial impact on world civilisation & culture, that sort of thing? Do you ever pine for a bit of grand discursion, an anecdote here, a fascinating fact there; for an amiable companion rather than some zealot of minutiae or lazy hack padding out the best they came up with at lunch with their publisher? I must say I didn't hold out much hope about Eating Up Italy: Voyages on a Vespa. Another foodie boring on about fancy sausages, I thought. And on a Vespa: a miserly, fit sort of foodie to boot, I thought. And he writes for The Guardian. What a splendid surprise, then, to come across Matthew Fort, fat & flabby & over-50 by his own account, & a mesmerisingly entertaining man to travel with the length of Italy. A man, true, obsessed by food far too much than is good for him or his poor Vespa; but a man, too, who can convey that passion, make the sex life of the snail a thing of fascination, and, yes, even make fancy sausages interesting: read his encounter with the five sausage butchers of Salmona if you don't believe me. Add to this some memorable facts - did you know that Goethe was a foodie, or what excess carried off Cavour? - & accounts, particularly of scootering in Naples, accomplished with wit & not a little confided wisdom. Fort even tells us why the Italians talk so much, a condition he clearly shares & relishes. There are well laid-out recipes for the stuff he so lovingly describes, although I felt "sauce of castrated lamb" also lost something in the translation. Va voom bene!
va voom bene! - By: , 06 Aug 2004 Are you, like me, tired of alll these remorselessly microscopic, one-theme books? You know, three times as much as you ever wanted to know about socks, & their previously unregarded, unrevealed & crucial impact on world civilisation & culture, that sort of thing? Do you ever pine for a bit of grand discursion, an anecdote here, a fascinating fact there; for an amiable companion rather than some zealot of minutiae or lazy hack padding out the best they came up with at lunch with their publisher? I must say I didn't hold out much hope about Eating Up Italy: Voyages on a Vespa. Another foodie boring on about fancy sausages, I thought. And on a Vespa: a miserly, fit sort of foodie to boot, I thought. And he writes for The Guardian. What a splendid surprise, then, to come across Matthew Fort, fat & flabby & over-50 by his own account, & a mesmerisingly entertaining man to travel with the length of Italy. A man, true, obsessed by food far too much than is good for him or his poor Vespa; but a man, too, who can convey that passion, make the sex life of the snail a thing of fascination, and, yes, even make fancy sausages interesting: read his encounter with the five sausage butchers of Salmona if you don't believe me. Add to this some memorable facts - did you know that Goethe was a foodie, or what excess carried off Cavour? - & accounts, particularly of scootering in Naples, accomplished with wit & not a little confided wisdom. Fort even tells us why the Italians talk so much, a condition he clearly shares & relishes. There are well laid-out recipes for the stuff he so lovingly describes, although I felt "sauce of castrated lamb" also lost something in the translation. Va Bene!
