Product Description

The most comprehensive guide to matching food and drink ever
compiled, by the James Beard Award-winning author team of Andrew Dornenburg
and Karen Page, with practical advice from America's leading pairing
experts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29763 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

Los Angeles Times, February 21, 2007
"Thanks to Dornenburg's experience as a chef and the pair's
seemingly insatiable appetites and exhaustive taxonomic energies, the
authors have shed new light on the art of pairing, ensuring even the novice
wine drinker -- and eater -- a book's worth of peak experiences."

Copley News Service wine columnist, December 16, 2006
"The world's greatest book on the subject."

Chicago Tribune, December 13, 2006
"Here's a look at some of the winning vintages in this year's crop
of wine (and spirits) books...WHAT TO DRINK WITH WHAT YOU EAT. Andrew
Dornenburg and Karen Page. This husband-and-wife team has long had the
knack of being on the cutting edge of America's fascination with the food
world, whether the book was about formation of a chef or the duties of a
restaurant critic. In this new work on the magical pairing of food and
wine, Dornenburg and Page again rely on a formidable array of insiders to
inform and enliven their research."

Customer Reviews

A gold mine of information
This is a real gold mine of information for anyone interested in food and drink matching. Most of the book consists of two sections, the first indexed by food giving suggested matching drinks, and the second indexed by drinks giving suggested matching food. Unlike most books on the subject, it also considers drinks other than wine, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. These sections are farly comprehensive - there's even suggestions for what wines to drink with KFC or McDonalds, should you have the inclination. Sometimes there is a certain lack of symmetry between the two sections - you may find that although drink A references food B, food B may not necessarily reference drink A and vice versa. This occasional sloppy editing does not detract from the usefulness of this book too much. Because the authors have enlisted a large panel of experts (I counted over 70 names in the appendix) in compiling the lists, this avoids any narrow bias of personal preferences and gives a wider choice of suggestions than if it was compiled by a single individual. Each suggestion given in the list for each food/drink is given a grading (1-4 scale indicated by normal font, bold, bold capitals or starred) according to how many of the experts suggested it.

There is an introductory section discussing the principles of food and drink matching, but this is relatively concise (there is also an end section with some of the experts giving their dozen "desert island wines" along with the food they would eat with it; this section is about as much use as a chocolate teapot to you and I however as they all tend to choose some ridiculously expensive vintage wines from Chateau Somewhere-You've-Never-Heard-Of). This book would best be used therefore in conjunction with some other book teaching you more detail about the principles of food and wine matching (for example Food and Wine Pairing: A Sensory Experience).