A charming collection of thoughts and missives on the intersection of food and literature, presented by the delightful Dwight Garner with the perfect balance of reverence for and irreverence about both.

The best parts of this are really about writers talking about eating and drinking, rather than the headliner discussion of eating while reading, though Garner serves up some delicious thoughts while discussing both.

I’m always confused by the inclusion of a critic’s lowbrow pet food item in books like this. An attempt to be a “man of the people?” But aren’t we coming to you to refine or validate our own taste rather than seeking an endorsement of one’s most lowbrow favorite? It’s great to include things that are less expensive and easily available, but that’s a far cry from a pickle and peanut butter sandwich. Yuck.

But that’s my lone gripe with what Garner has given us, which is largely informative, fun, and masterfully written. An enjoyable read and a uniquely conceived offering of food history and criticism.

Garner's vivid storytelling captures the essence of food and community, creating a heartwarming and delicious narrative. This memoir is a delightful feast for the senses, celebrating the joy found in simple culinary pleasures.

Fun for foodies!

Highly recommend if you would like insight into a foodie life. Well paced and an enjoyable read.


Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an arc. All opinions expressed are my own.

First off, my thanks to NetGalley and FS&G for an e-ARC of this title.
NYTBR editor and reviewer Dwight Garner over the years seems to have collected quips and quotes and comments about food in books over at least a couple of decades.
This is a memoir, mostly about him and food. His standard practice is to mention a food or beverage ( e.g. bacon) and give his quick opinion on it. And then provide the reader with a handful of opinions about it from writers from a varity of different genres and professions.
So we get quotes and ideas from novelists (contemporary and older), politicians, critics (F&B and literary), painters and on and on and on.
This is a quick, enjoyable read - and if you finish it without having close to a dozen new authors or books to read, well, then you're better read than either myself or Garner. While it is a quick read, I found myself enjoying it so much that I was in no hurry to finish it.
He talks about his being overweight from the very beginning, but I did Google photos of him. He is a large man, but nothing like an Orson Welles (who oddly does not make it into this volume) or James Beard, or even Churchill (who he likes to quote) for that matter. OTOH, the one experience that made my jaw drop was when he and his wife (writer, including of cookbooks, Cree Le Favour) and her father (Bruce, a West Coast/Rocky Mts chef) had a sumptuous meal one evening. They took a breather at the table, and then reordered the whole meal all over again! Me - NOPE!
Not much "heavy" going on here - just a lot of fun opinions (and experiences) on food being shared by the author.
Fun, fast read - really enjoyable. And a great source to expand all of our TBR piles.
4.5 out of 5.

Became a DNF after some swearing early on, and some unfortunate content I didn't personally care to read about.

Also, not having read Proust myself, I quickly grew tired of the ongoing Proustian references. ;)

The concept of the book is great; food and reading/literature are a great combo, and I'm a huge proponent of reading while eating (or eating while reading). A bummer some of the content and I didn't work out.

I received an eARC of the book from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Delighted to include this title in The Globe and Mail newspaper’s extensive annual Holiday Gift Books package in the weekend section of Globe Arts.

In Nora Ephron's "Heartburn," Nora Ephron intersperses scenes of caustic wit over her heroine Rachel's divorce with recipes for Rachel's food that she makes and describes in her role as a food writer. If you were the kind of reader who used the novel's recipes for your own cooking, Dwight Garner's "The Upstairs Delicatessen" is the perfect comfort book for you. Garner combines his love for literature with his love for culinary delights.

Garner divides the book into sections related to food: breakfast, lunch, shopping, drinking and dinner. Within these chapters, he examines how writers have written about food and food practices. In the breakfast section for example, we get descriptions of how the making of tea, eggs, bacons and biscuits have such personal meaning to the writers and fictional characters of all time. We learn about the breakfast philosophies from writers such as Hunter S. Thompson, Cormac McCarthy, Sylvia Plath, and John Updike. Garner not only includes massive amounts of fictional examples of breakfast consumption, but how our breakfast techniques and beliefs influence how we go about out day. Do we subsist on just coffee? If we eat eggs, how do we prepare them?

In the lunch section, Garner explores how writers depict lunch and the practice of eating lunch. From these writers, there are complaints about stingy waiters who won’t give patrons enough lemons; tables that should be destroyed by the eager consumption of the food and drink; annoyance at Americans who treat lunch with disdain. Garner points out how many business deals were made over lunch. Mencken blames hot dogs for ruining the eating of lunch, but writers Audre Lorde and David Sedaris show allegiance to the American food. In Garner’s world, there is something democratic about hot dogs rather than more “culturally important” lunch foods. When families do not have a lot of money, fast food items are the only type of “restaurant” food they will have access to.

Garner reminds us that tt’s often how we eat food that tells others about our lives; we convince ourselves that our eating habits are healthy. We know we shouldn’t eat fast food or sugar-laden sweets, but we still do it because we tell ourselves it doesn’t matter. We only admit the truth when we have health problems related to our food and drink consumption.

In the dinner section, Garner highlights how the availability of cookbooks changed the way families eat and make dinner. As his Nigella Lawson anecdote points out, families often only use cookbooks when they’re having a dinner party; however Julia Child revolutionised the way her viewers cooked at home. Child made cooking more accessible to people who never thought they were would be able to have fantastic food. Garner also writes of how black American in the forties would often eat at Chinese and Japanese restaurants because they were often the only place where they would not be attacked or denied service.

Garner’s book is a wonderful and informative look on how Americans have created their identities around their consumption of food and literature. It’s a list-making reader’s idea of heaven as Garner includes so many books that a reader could spend the next few years reading all the books cited in the book.

Food is fact and fiction, Proustian and plebeian. At times, it's the Dickinsonian frigate to imagination. Other times, it's something ordinary to consume. As a psycho-social device, food reflects and refracts its context. Garner's sage composition affirms novelist Jonathan Safran Foer's conceit, "Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, craving, and identity."

For avid readers and eaters Garner's book will be a fun read. It's the kind of book that you read while trying to remember other books and references. You'll refer back to it as it lends itself to multiple readings and skipping around. The format is very apt.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. I'm sure it will find many fans.

*4.5 stars*

If you love food…. And reading…

The cover was catchy, the title even more so. I honestly didn’t know who the author was when I started reading but by the end I felt I knew him well – or wanted to.

I was happy to get acquainted as he shared so much of himself and the impact of food on his own life and those of others. All those cooking shows I’ve watched. The books I’ve read on food and cooking. On cooks themselves. The author brought so many people’s voices to the table as he pulled an amazing number of quotes, anecdotes and snippets relating to food into these pages. From eating simple meals, to the finest of dining. To the practicalities of creating a dish to discussing the impact on one who ate it, there was much to consume in this food-centric, delicious book.

Eating and reading are some of my favourite things too and this author blended them together in a hot, flavourful cauldron of stories, quotes and name-dropping galore. This book is a compendium of sorts where it feels like every quote, anecdote and snippet regarding the joys of eating (and reading) were included. And they were delightful. And filled the pages to the brim.

A really good book has me searching for more – by the author, on the subject – and it will take me years to go back and look into/learn more about each one of my marked highlights. Good thing my e-reader never runs out of marker ink!

I miss Dwight on The Book Review Podcast! I always listened and whenever Dwight was on, I left with notes on just about everything! I am thankful and thrilled that FSG and Netgalley granted me the opportunity to read Garner’s memoir and am looking forward to a paper copy to house and discover further notes for deeper discovery and thinking. What a treasure. Garner is literary esoterica and I possess neither the education, experience or vocabulary to interview with Garner but thankfully I had his words to read. Thoughtful, transparent, mouth watering, historic, hysterical, forgiving. melancholic, and so much more. It is a journey into food, personal history, family gestalt, and a walk around New York food venues as books stake and life rolls on. Wonderful.

Lovers of food memoirs will enjoy this book. I didn't grip me the way some have, but it also didn't lose my attention the way others have. It was a solid and enjoyable meat and potatoes meal.

I lost hours in this book. A selection of stories / essays about reading and eating. I had no idea the topic could be so expansive and how much eating and food was written into literature. I devoured it !

Dear reader, consider yourself to be warned – while reading "The Upstairs Delicatessen," you'll undoubtedly, at some point, head to the kitchen to eat either a slice of cheese or a piece of chocolate or even feel strangely invigorated to make yourself a pasta dish or whip up a favorite cake. This excellent book by Dwight Garner has that effect on a person. It reminds us that food is the source of pleasure.

It's refreshing that the author doesn't discriminate between dishes as long as they bring us joy. A quick cheeseburger at Dick's, the Seattle legendary drive-through joint, can be as satisfying (if not more) as a fifty-course meal prepared by Nathan Myhhrvold, the multimillionaire turned cookbook writer. It's not an accident that we remember our favorite dishes from our childhood, the ones often prepared in a small kitchen, without any recipe, with an outrageous amount of butter or other fat. Food offers people more than just nourishment - it connects us with others, makes some of the best memories, and elevates our daily lives.

The book is smartly divided into chapters, i.e., "Breakfast," "Lunch," "Dinner," "Shopping," and "Drinking," and it's a culinary/literary memoir that reads like beautiful, witty essays. Dwight Garner has been a long-time book critic for "The New York Times," and his writing is exceptional: friendly and chatty, as well as informative. I always enjoyed reading anecdotes about famous people's favorite dishes and drinks.

This book sparked my interest in oysters and informed me why a martini tastes better when shaken, not stirred (obviously, James Bond knew the difference.) I also learned that Orwell thought "there should be statues memorializing cooks instead of politicians and bishops." It sounds like a great idea!

This is a fun book (somewhat memoir) about food and eating in books and while reading and…honestly I’m not sure. The author is a writer and lifelong reader and foodie. The number of books that he references is remarkable. I read an ARC that didn’t have the finished index but I’m hoping there is a list at the end. He basically just jumps from book to book and it is a bit whip lash inducing but also highly impressive and entertaining. This was very enjoyable reading experience. I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.

Thank you to the author, Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For someone like me, who loves food, and loves reading, this is a very enjoyable read. Structured around the meals and activities of a day, the author recounts lots of personal anecdotes, weaves in mentions of books and poems about eating and food (or that feature memorable meals etc.), as well as stories about well-known authors and restaurants. Part memoir, part musings and complemented by mentions of books that fit the topic, this sent me down a few rabbit holes and resulted in several lists of "must reads".

I so enjoyed this book about “eating, reading, reading about eating, and eating while reading!” Author Dwight Garner has really done his homework as he talks about famous authors, their books, and comments they have made, all regarding food and drink. Garner, himself a journalist, book reviewer, food critic and lover, has accumulated hundreds of quotes about food but also adds in some of his favorite life memories where food was an important “ingredient.”

He divides the book into chapters: Breakfast, Lunch, Shopping, Swim or Nap, Drinking, and Dinner. It feels like a day in which many people express their opinions about how much food and drink have impacted their lives.

It was fun, witty, educational, and scrumptious! I loved it and highly recommend it!

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy.

My only issue with the book is that it provides an information overload, and you won't remember most of it by the time you finish it. But you could always read it all over again. So no complaints.

The Upstairs Delicatessen is an enjoyable journey through eating and drinking and takes us on multiple rabbit holes which I enjoyed tremendously. Part memoir, part survey of literature and quotes about food and drinking, Given that he is a s a book critic for the New York Times and a former senior editor of the New York Times Book Review, it makes sense that is so well read (and fed - sorry but I could not help but add this rhyme) I made notes on all the different foods and books I want to pursue next. This book was a fun and quick read.

Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC and I left this review voluntarily.

An impressive and enjoyable collection of stories on reading and eating – perhaps two of life’s greatest pleasures for the author Dwight Garner. The Upstairs Delicatessen is broken down into five chapters: breakfast, lunch, shopping, drinking, and dinner. I’d be remiss to say I didn’t appreciate Garner’s short section on napping, a mandatory and much enjoyed (pants off) daytime activity. The book is seasoned with humour, and woven throughout are tales about Garner, his wife, the cookbook author Cree Lefavour, and his kids.

Garner examines the works of Joan Didion, Eve Babitz, George Orwell, and Anthony Veasna So, to name a few, musing over fine sections on cuisine from their books. He writes on the rituals of dining, his own and others, all the way from breakfast to dinner. A walk through the grocery store mid-way through feels like pure bliss for Garner who pushes his cart from aisle to aisle describing the wares.

One gets the sense Garner has been preparing to write this book since childhood, collecting snippets of books, articles, and ads relating to food. I felt his passion on the topic soaked through every page.

For anyone who loves to read or to eat, or who loves the two combined, Dwight Garner’s The Upstairs Delicatessen is a great joy. For some, it will feel like a return to being a kid again, for others it will be an uplifting education. You may even be tempted to try a peanut butter and pickle sandwich. At the very least, you’ll close this book with many of the acclaimed book reviewer’s suggestions to add to your must-read list.