[.ca] Renaissance Guide Food And Wine Pairing (ISBN 159257114X)

A cork, a fork, and two dorks:
With all due apologies to the other reviewers of this book, I must strongly disagree with their opinions. This is quite possibly the worst book ever written on wine and food. The Renaissance Guide to Wine and Food Pairing is a profoundly stupid and fatuous book. In fact, I was so repelled by it that I feel it incumbent upon me as an Amazon reviewer to warn all unsuspecting readers away as though it were the scene of a gruesome accident, or at minimum a wine so bad it would make you sick just to smell it, let alone drink it. Let me put it another way. Perhaps you are familiar with the old street threat, "I'll hit you so hard I'll kill your whole family." In the case of this book, not only will I never buy anything again written by the so-called authors, I'm also going to avoid the publisher because of the lousy job they did allowing a book this bad to appear on the market. I don't have time to enumerate the flaws and gratuitous nonsense that permeate nearly every page. The authors appear more concerned with name-dropping their encounters with famous chefs and winemakers than with anything else. Each new chapter is another exercise in horribly smug and self-congratulatory prose that offers little of practical value and a lot of butt-kissing. I didn't learn a blessed thing in this book until page 205 when it was revealed in a sidebar that the word avocado is derived from the Aztec word for testicle. Chew on that for a while. There are many good books and sections of books that have been written about marrying food and wine. Two that come immediately to mind are Wesson and Rosengarten's "Red Wine with Fish" and the food and wine chapter of the Culinary Institute of America's "Exploring Wine". In both you will find practical and frequently imaginative principles you can employ to match wine and food. The Renaissance Guide is little more than a loose stitching together of interviews with famous chefs (and some winemakers) that center around ridiculously esoteric menus paired up with wines provided by Tony DiDio, the lead author. I won't even begin to describe how self-indulgent these chapters are. Suffice it to say they are what appear to be unedited transcripts of the mind-numbingly self-congratulatory, dull and useless conversations that ensue, complete with (laughter) indicated in (parentheses) where the author "cracks a good one". I'm honestly surprised that Daniel Boulud, who is interviewed here and seems like a decent, unpretentious guy, would allow his stature as one of America's best chefs to be debased in this book. Ok, let's get more granular. Bad writing. Atrocious editing. Multiple references to pairing with obscure wines like Lagrein (great wine, but probably unknown to 99% of the readers and not exactly carried in the run of the mill wine store) without any useful introduction. More than a hundred pages of useless filler on wine history and how to read labels that is completely irrelevant to the subject of the book. Hideous tables that are meant to be copied as handy references but spill randomly over three pages and contain nothing really useful. Horrible lapses and gaffes. Multiple recommendations for a food/wine match where you have no idea what the wine is or even its country of origin and without any reason why it works. And I swear I'm only getting warmed up. The authors devote a whole "chapter" to the subject of wine and pasta. After a page or so it suddenly shifts to a region by region discussion of Italy and wines that go with their cuisines. The chapter is about 8 pages long. It covers the food and wine matches by basically describing one dish and naming one wine for each region. How the authors decide to summarily dismiss Lombardia, Liguria, Basilicata and The Marches in favor of other wine growing regions is sufficient to start another Italian civil war. Is Lagrein more available in the US than Aglianico del Vulture or Rosso Piceno? It's not worth debating with these clowns. To their credit, the authors must realize that it's hard to cover all of Italy in 8 pages, or at least the parts they've heard of, so the next chapter is an interview with the chef and sommelier of I Trulli Italian restaurant in New York. To give you an idea for how bad this book is, they refer to a wine on one page as Terre de Trinci Sagrantino de Montefalco, and two pages later as Terre de Rinci Sagrantino de Montalcino. You say Montefalco, I say Montalcino, let's call the whole thing off. Besides, these Eye-talian towns and wines and stuff, it's confusing cause they all kinda sound alike. Am I right or am I wrong? (If you want to read a great book about Italian wine and food, try "Vino Italiano" by Bastianich and Lynch). If you read this review and still buy this vile book, I really must say I can't be held responsible. I suspect that the authors know something about the subject, but given how badly they express it, they should have their thumbs broken if not their tongues cauterized (laughter). But the real crime here was perpetrated by the publisher, who failed to organize the material in a way that was anything but an embarrassment to all involved, including you if you buy it. The value in this book could be boiled down to about four pages with some judicious editing, and I've seen free newsletters from winestores that have better and more practical advice on the subject. The only match for this piece of offal that really works is the garbage can.

superb wine book:
I love this offering from Mr. DiDio and Ms. Zavatto. Their approachable take on pairing food and wine gave me, a relative wine novice, great confidence in exploring this frequently snobbish world. I appreciate the humor, organization, and lack of elitism, not to mention their meetings of the minds with New York's top chefs. I've bought copies for five people already... It's more than just handy and informative -- it's a pleasure to read.

Why this book is different:
Finally...a food and wine book that is a great read, not a typical totally boring food and wine book. No knock on the Andrea Immers of the World but her style (which is the prevailing literary style in this genre) is in a word BORING! Mr. DiDio on the other hand takes a novel approach. The book has a you are there feel to it; especially his banter with culinary luminaries such as Daniel Bouloud, Rick Moonen and Don Pintabona and his insightful interviews with world class winemakers such as Paul Draper of Ridge, Jim Clendenen of au Bon Climat, Bob Lindquist of Qupe and Bob Sessions of Hanzell. I give this book 4 chef's hats!

Renaissance Guide to Wine and Food:
This book is great for any wine & food lover. Whether you're a novice or a professional. I loved the interviews with the chefs and wine makers! Matching wine & food is always a challenge and Tony DiDio and Amy make it fun. A great gift for all the holidays....

Not a wine snob's book:
Wow -- I couldn't disagree more with the review below of this book. Maybe it's not snobby enough for the wine "expert" who reviewed it, but that's just what I liked about it. I'm far from an expert on wine and really get turned off by those overblown books by snobs who think only experts should appreciate wine. I loved this book because as a fairly accomplished home cook, I've never found a book that clearly and simply explained wine and food pairing (they all pretend that it's this big "mystery" that only experts can figure out.) I love the interviews with the chefs -- makes me feel like it's not so difficult. Very approachable and unintimidating book. Not for the wine snob, that's for sure. I really liked it.