Contra los gourmets

Is gastronomy the art of turning the need (to eat) into a virtue? Or is it simply "an exemplary metaphor for the culture's hypocrisy"? Between human instinct and the most subtle cultural reference, gastronomy occupies a wide space of knowledge and flavors, of timeless reflection and historical transience: gastronomy, like religion itself, is a culture. And gastronomy, like religion itself, has its officiants, cooks, and its theologians; one of them was the author of this work, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Contra los gourmets presents a wise review of the history, sociology and philosophy of stoves and tablecloths, as well as a description of Western cuisines, with special attention to French and Spanish, and a pertinent reflection on the "pleasures elemental foods" which are bread, wine and cheese, foods of pilgrims and the poor. A collection of texts, in short, designed to awaken the highest passions, and that synthesizes the human capacity to make the vulgar sublime, comparable only to that of making the sublime vulgar. It is the work that, without a doubt, Carvalho would have approved.