Taste: The No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller

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As “Taste” progresses, it begins to lose some steam and the boiling pot settles (another pun!). Tucci’s tales become quite repetitive and read exactly the same: “I ate here. I liked this dish. Then I ate here with this person. I liked or hated that.” Boring! There isn’t much excitement to be shared or a thesis to these experiences. It is also at this point that Tucci begins to name drop chefs, other foodies, and his celebrity friends which are consequentially tedious and too typical Hollywood. This type of behavior is seemingly ‘below’ Tucci and has little place in “Taste” therefore weakening the essence of the memoir. The walks down the west side of Manhattan in the late seventies when I was a student at John Jay college, occasionally dropping in on small, family owned restaurants that served delicious food at very inexpensive prices...and which today no longer exist because of the gentrification of that side of Manhattan. Guess what, he waited six months! I know. I'm calling him out here only to prevent someone else from doing the same. A good reader friend pointed out that this was probably anxiety, and not just a guy avoiding the prognosis. He’s right of course, and I mistook it for machismo, which was totally incorrect.

Taste: My Life through Food by Stanley Tucci | Goodreads

Monday: Meatball wedge. As we had meatballs in a slow-cooked, homemade, ragù with pasta for Sunday dinner, this lunch was a natural choice. Filming in the UK, and later moving to (and currently living in) London, Tucci describes a some food in the UK as such: During summer vacations we followed the same routine like crazed ants at an endless picnic. I don’t remember anyone in our neighbourhood ever going on an extended summer vacation, so we all just hung around together for those two humid months, going from one dwelling to another, eating our own and each other’s parents out of house and home. I found summer vacations so joyful. The days were long, allowing us to play outside until nine p.m., at which point we would have already negotiated a sleepover at one or another of our homes so that we might never be parted even in slumber. Summertime also brought my favourite holiday, besides Christmas: Independence Day, also known as the Fourth of July.

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In adult years, we travel with Tucci in his career and learn about the on-set food and hear wonderful tales of Italian food and history. The sharing of recipes. The friendships and bonding that occur over shared meals. The conversations. The moments you will never forget. Fortunately, things worked out in the end, but after two years of surgery, chemo, pain, and a long recovery. One by one, fill the bottles (with a ladle, via funnel) with the tomato juice and add a pinch of salt and a basil leaf to each. My crush on Stanley Tucci isn’t primarily sexual. It’s more about the delights he whips up in the kitchen, his well-tailored ensembles, and the way his entire body so precisely flits along the surface of every changing emotion.

Taste | Book by Stanley Tucci | Official Publisher Page Taste | Book by Stanley Tucci | Official Publisher Page

Not only is this an autobiography but it’s a dip into history, cuisine of Italian-Americans and Italy, Stanley Tucci cooking, Stanley Tucci family and a glimpse into Stanley Tucci cookbook recipes. LOVED THIS!Friday: Scrambled egg, pepper, and potato wedge. As the food budget was wearing thin by the end of the week, this was an inexpensive lunch my mother might whip up on Thursday night after a simple dinner of pasta and salad. As charming and warm as the man himself. A wonderful mix of family anecdotes, the importance of food, the love of food and how we tie food memories to events, people and places. He's sexy, sensitive, and he can cook, well! He has a tiny bit of machismo, I'll explain later, but it doesn't really surface often. Most remember him from, 'The Devil wears Prada,' and 'Julie and Julia' both with Meryl Streep. My favorite is, 'Big Night' which is a great segue to Taste. Stanley Tucci puts the sexy in Sixty! He's that handsome, bald, Italian-American guy, with the devilish smirk, who you just know he's thinking about something good.

Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci, Hardcover Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci, Hardcover

The book started off well enough with memories of his mother in particular who cooked up a storm and growing up in an Italian American family. Many memories made me laugh because I also grew up in an Italian American family. In my family, however, my father worked two jobs to make ends meet and when things got tough, monetarily, my mom went out to work at a bank and rose in ranks as the head teller. Those were difficult times as we hardly saw our parents but my mother always, always “cooked up a storm” for her family.My name is Larry and I love food. I mean, seriously. I love to read about it, I love to cook it, and I seriously love to eat it. Most of the memoirs I’ve read have been written by chefs or have been about people’s love of food, so when I saw Stanley Tucci (one of my favorite actors) had written this book, I jumped on it like I would a buffet. (Hey, #fatboysgottafat.) He talks about all of it and includes recipes, good ones. My galley didn't include photos, but I would bet the published version will, and I can't wait. There are lots of gaps. We get the childhood in Katonah, New York (the son of a high-school art teacher, his grandparents emigrated to the US from Calabria), but little about his efforts to win an Equity card (maybe he was too poor to eat then). His two marriages are touched on only lightly (his first wife, Kathryn, died of cancer in 2009; his second – whom he met at her sister’s wedding, at George Clooney’s “gorgeous” house in Lake Como – is the literary agent, Felicity Blunt). There isn’t much… gossip, unless you count the (non) revelation that Marcello Mastroianni, with whom Tucci once had dinner, favoured a digestivo comprising half a shot of amaro and half a shot of Fernet-Branca. Taste was a delightful memoir by Stanley Tucci of his life through food beginning with growing up in an Italian family in upstate New York with many traditions surounding food. He lovingly describes how when he was growing up, his mother spent most of her waking time in the kitchen, which she does to this day. In Tucci's words, cooking for her is at once a creative outlet and a way of feeding her family well:

Stanley Tucci Memoir 2021 | Taste: My Life Through Food Book

Favorite chapters were when he talked about his shoots on films in different countries. The food that was provided. I think Iceland, surprisingly to him and me, was Iceland. The chapter when he talks about his family having to be isolated together due to Covid. Two young children, four over 18, himself and his wife. I was exhausted just reading about it. Taste” does end in a memorable and ‘cute’ way rounding out the text and going full-circle to the beginning of the piece. This is done well on a writing level and with its attempt to connect with readers concluding “Taste” on a positive note. His humor is readily apparent, though he also has had his share of suffering. Ones life is never all peaches and cream and though his seems at time magical, the food he's eaten, the places he's been and the friends he has made, there is plenty of bad with the good. Who is the author? Stanley Tucci is an Italian-American actor, director, cookbook author, writer, and self-declared food lover. When he’s not gracing our screen in movies like The Devil Wears Prada or Julie & Julia, he can be found exploring the varied landscape and cuisine of Italy in his latest award-winning television venture, Searching for Italy. He lists wonderful pairings of pasta and sauce because “not all wheat flour pasta works with all sauces”.

Now that I spend most of my time in London, I must admit celebrating American Independence Day is a tad uncomfortable for one fairly obvious reason: the colonists won and the British lost. (I know the war was a long time ago, but I never quite know how to celebrate that victorious day here without feeling like I’m rubbing it in some Brit’s face—like my in-laws.) However, during the Obama administration, my family and I were fortunate enough to be invited to two July Fourth fêtes at Winfield House in Regent’s Park, the home of the American ambassador. These were lovely, casually posh daytime affairs for expats (a nice word for immigrants) and their families, complete with American military bands, jazz singers, and all the traditional American foods one could eat. How ironic that in England, of all places, on these two occasions I would be reminded of all the positive aspects of this important American day. Taking part in joyous celebrations of American democracy on foreign soil made me long for a time in my youth when the sausage and peppers of Italian immigrants sat peacefully on the grill alongside their American cousins, the hot dog and the hamburger. I listen to 4-5 audiobooks a month on Audible. If you sign up here, you can get 30 days free trial on Audible which gives you 1 credit to get any Audiobook you want and access to hundreds of free material including audiobooks and podcasts.