Ant Egg Soup: The Adventures Of A Food Tourist In Laos Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)From the moment she lands in Laos and asks a customs official for the most authentic place to eat in town I was hooked on the author's cultural odyssey into the country's gastronomic soul. It's beautifully written and I found it a brave, generous book, siffused with a passion for exotic cuisine and a genuine affection for the people she encounters. Her own illustrations and a glut of tasty recipes nestle with quixotic travellers' tales and stimulating insights into the history, politics and customs of a country that is little known to the West. There are also some apposite reflections on tourism and international development.Complex and, naturally, hunger inducing. I loved it.

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Product Description:
Natacha Du Pont De Bie is no ordinary tourist. She'll trek for hours or even days in search of a good lunch. Her obsession with food is such that, while others are lying comatose on the beach or cycling up mountains, she'll be down at the local market, elbow deep in produce, grilling people on where to find the best indigenous restaurants and cafes and jotting down recipes. She is a self-proclaimed food tourist - she can't think of a better way to experience a country and its culture than through its cuisine. And the more obscure the better. So when Natacha found out that there was only one cookbook on Lao cuisine by the late king's chef, she promptly decided that the challenge of hunting down recipes and discovering a new gastronomy was just too tempting. "Ant Egg Soup" is the result of her adventures in Laos, the stories of the people she met, the places she visited and, of course, the food she tasted: drinking raw turkey blood with herbs in a tribal village, cooking Paradise chicken in a little guest house by the Kung Si waterfalls and sampling fried cricket during the Festival of the Golden Stupa.Funny and refreshing, fascinating and enlightening, "Ant Egg Soup" will awaken the senses while redefining the art of travelling and eating abroad.