Pierre Arthens, "the greatest food critic in the world," is dying, and has but a day or two to retrieve from a scrumptious array of memories the one great flavor that haunts him from his materially successful but emotionally bankrupt life.
"I am going to die, but that is of no importance. Since yesterday, since Chabrot, only one thing matters. I am going to die and there is a flavor that has been teasing my taste buds and my heart and I simply cannot recall it. I know that this particular flavor is the first and ultimate truth of my entire life, and that it holds the key to a heart that I have since silenced. I know that it is a flavor from childhood or adolescence, an original, marvelous dish that predates my vocation as a critic, before I had any desire or pretension to expound on my pleasure in eating. A forgotten flavor, lodged in my deepest self, and which has surfaced at the twilight of my life as the only truth ever told - or realized. I search, and cannot find."
Arthens views his long mis-treated wife as only an object of beauty, a collectible. He views his three children with disdain as offspring are nothing more to him "than the monstrous excrescences of our own selves, pitiful substitutes for our unfulfilled desires." He has shown his mistresses no affection. He treats strangers with disdain. He has shown respect or acceptance only for those few who share his passion and for his cat. The reader moves from one short, precise chapter to another collecting the viewpoints on his life from those close to him including the pets and statuary in his home. In between these observations, the critic revisits the culinary high points of his life in hope of retrieving that one last flavor in which he will find some redemption. And it is these segments that are the best parts of the book - a foodie's delight.
Whether the description is of simple toast ..."The moment I bit into the slice of toast, utterly sated for having honored my bountiful plate up to the very last morsel, I was overcome with an inexpressible sense of well-being. Why isit that in France we obstinately refrain from buttering our toast until after it has been toasted? the reason for the two entities should be subjected together to the flickering flame is that in this intimate moment of burning they attain an unequaled complicity. The butter loses its creamy consistency, but nevertheless is not as liquid as when it is melted on its own,in a bain-marie or a saucepan. Likewise, the toast is spared a somewhat dreary dryness, and becomes a moist, warm substance, neither sponge nor bread but something in between, ready to tantalize one's taste buds with its resultant sweetness."
or a tomato from a garden ...
“Sugar, water, fruit, pulp, liquid or solid? The raw tomato, devoured in the garden when freshly picked is a horn of abundance of simple sensations, a radiating rush in one’s mouth that brings with it every pleasure. The resistance of the skin—slightly taut, just enough the luscious yield of the tissues, their seed filled liqueur oozing to the corners of one’s lips, and that one wipes away without any fear of staining one’s fingers, this plump little globe unleashing a flood of nature inside us: a tomato, an adventure.”
or the magnificence of sashimi ...
"It was dazzling… True sashimi is not so much bitten into as allowed to melt on the tongue. It calls for slow, supple chewing, not to bring about a change in the nature of the food but merely to allow one to savor its airy, satiny texture… sashimi is velvet dust, verging on silk, or a bit of both, and the extraordinary alchemy of its gossamer essence allows it to preserve a milky density unknown even by clouds.”
... the result is the same. You will feel hungry. For both the food described and more of the language that captures its essence. This book is small and driven by a character portrait of one deeply flawed man. Although Gourmet Rhapsody was published in France prior to the widely popular The Elegance of the Hedgehog, it has been released in the US after the success of that second novel. And it is a lesser work. Smaller in its scope. If Hedgehog is triple creme and first growth then Gourmet Rhapsody is locally made wine to accompany a provincial feast served in the vineyard much like Arthens' memorable meal in Colleville. Yet aren't both desirable if in different ways? It has disappointed some who craved the complexities of the second novel when they pick up this one first, but it has great charm of its own.
