The Food of Love - Anthony Capella

As the title of the book makes quite clear, The Food of Love not very originally ties love of food with sex and gives the term ‘fancying an Italian’ a double meaning. Laura is an America student who has won a scholarship to spend a year studying art history in Rome. Having had enough of fresh, hot-blooded, yet romantically-challenged Italian men, she decides she needs someone more considerate, who can look after her palette as well as her heart – someone who can cook slow instead of burning hot. She promises her friend that in future she is only going to date men who know their Bearnaise from their Béchamel. That line kind of sets the tone for the book and if that's not to your taste, you’re not going to appreciate the …er, subtleties of this book.

Tomasso overhears her make this comment and, while he may know good food when he tastes it, just as he recognises an easy tourist conquest when he sees one, he’s no cook, but he manages to pass himself off to Laura as a master-chef. The author explains this very carefully so that you don’t miss this important plot point. “When Tomasso told Laura that he was a chef, he wasn’t exactly telling the truth”, he tells us rather patronisingly, “or indeed, anything close to it”. No, really? What could he be then? “Tomasso was a waiter, a very junior waiter…”, - ah, that must be why he is cleaning glasses in a restaurant and rushing to the demands of the head waiter?  I’m glad that was clarified for me.

Unfortunately, this is the tone that the author adopts throughout, making the story – one without a shred of originality or flair – feel like a lecture, a cookery lesson, a guide to the etiquette of eating-out in all the right restaurants – one long menu of Italian dishes (which are actually included at the back of the book mixed in with revolting lovey-dovey talk), with a Cyrano de Bergerac-style love triangle. Tomasso gets his chef friend to prepare the dishes of seduction, as opposed to letters of seduction. Poor unhandsome, shy Bruno is unaware that he is actually seducing for Tomasso the beautiful girl he has been afraid to approach in the Trastavere market. When he does find out he decides that it’s enough for him to make her happy through his food. I think you can work out where that one is going, although to be honest I didn’t hang around past the first third of the book to find out.

Apart from that, there are some nice bits of local colour, and anyone who has been to Italy and particularly enjoyed the food will appreciate the “insider” knowledge – feel they know a bit more and can feel less of a tourist the next time they visit Rome and eat-out there. However, the writing isn’t particularly appealing, the characters shallow and have no personality beyond their love of food or love of sex or love of sex through food. This is however, clearly designed to be another Euro-pudding, chick-lit-lite bestseller in the style of Chocolat and it is equally as sickening. “This is perfect, Laura thought.  I’m on a deserted beach with my beautiful Roman lover, who has just cooked the most amazing seafood I have ever tasted. What more could I want?”.  Indeed, I’m sure many readers will want no more than this, but it’s more than I could stomach…