Signature Dishes That Matter

I am very impressed with this cookbook on steroids. I love the history of the signature dishes, which includes the recipe! In addition, this book brings out the culinary anthropologist in me. This is a book one could proudly display on their coffee table. I have thousands of books (including over a 1,000 cookbooks) and this is one of the best made books in the collections. The cloth page marker is a nice touch. This is much more than a cookbook.

This book is beautifully produced, exquisitely written, and almost all of the recipes look mouth-watering. (Some I would only order in a restaurant and allow someone else to do all the work.) Tonight we will make "General Tso's Chicken" -- a hybrid dish if ever there was one! -- to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year. My only complaint, and it's a minor one: it's overwhelmingly Francophile, which I guess is somewhat inevitable.

Just what he wanted.

This is a lovely coffee table book, with beautiful paper and marbled edges. However it isn't a cook book. Perhaps a little unfairly I'm knocking 2 stars off instead of 1 for the fact that it is unclear how many recipes are actually missing. I was personally frustrated because I bought the book for a specific recipe which even the actual chef is on Facebook stating it is in there and then under the recipe section in the back it says he won't release the recipe until after he retires. Humph. I bought it used so won't bother returning (it is in lovely condition) but will be passing it on to someone else.

This is kind of a fun food book giving the reader the birthplace of certain recipes started. Being a former Culinary History Instructor, it listed something real interesting recipes that appear accurate and a back story to go along with them. Good, fun book.

The media could not be loaded. The book is so beautiful. From the cover, to the colour stain on the edge of the pages, and illustrations are beautiful. But most importantly, the signature dishes comprises a good mix of classic and recent dishes from both Western and Asian cuisines.

These are the recipes that will make you identify the future of food. I cook for the Greatest Generation right now. The next generation is MY GENERATION. Think about what this book would look like in twenty years and that's what you will be eating in 10 years. American Regional at it's best. Look for my cookbook in five years

I love to collect recipe books, so I was excited to see this one after reading the reviews. However, I do not recommend it to anyone who actually wants to do any cooking from it. Definitely gives off coffee table decor vibes for people who want to seem sophisticated, but 95% of the recipes are not things anyone would want to cook / have access to ingredients for. For example, in 21st century America, I’m going to have a hard time getting my hands on pigs feet…. But multiple recipes for it lol. A lot of recipes are from the 50s and prior, which is a terrible time for food. Lots of weird meat gelatin recipes. Also one of the few recipes I actually was hopeful for didn’t have instructions????? See pic. Meat pie recipe is literally “find a pie mold, make a meat filling, go to town” like what????? What filling? What pastry?? How long to cook?) nothing! Lmao let me tell u I was shocked. So unless you want to spend $$$ on a pretty picture book, don’t recommend this one. Would return if I wasn’t massively lazy