The Upstairs Delicatessen

On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading

By: Dwight Garner

Narrated by: Christopher P. Brown

Reading and eating, like Krazy and Ignatz, Sturm und Drang, prosciutto and melon, Simon and Schuster, and radishes and butter, have always, for me, simply gone together. The book is a product of these combined gluttonies.

Dwight Garner, the beloved New York Times critic and the author of Garner's Quotations, serves up the intertwined pleasures of books and food. The product of a lifetime of obsessively reading, eating, and every combination therein, The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading is a charming, emotional memoir that only Garner could write. In it, he records the voices of great writers and the stories from his life that fill his mind as he moves through the sections of the day and of this book: breakfast, lunch, shopping, the occasional nap, drinking, and dinner.

Through his lifelong infatuation with these twin joys, we meet the man behind the pages and the plates, and a portrait of Garner, eager and insatiable, emerges. He writes with tenderness and humor about his mayonnaise-laden childhood in West Virginia and Naples, Florida (and his father's famous peanut butter and pickle sandwich), his mind-opening marriage to a chef from a foodie family, and the words and dishes closest to his heart. This is a book to be savored, though it may just whet your appetite for more.

©2023 Dwight Garner (P)2023 Tantor

A river of a book

This book flows over you and through you. You can't engage with it. You will remember almost none of it ( but what you do will be vivid). But you will enjoy being in it, letting it delightfully wash over you. If you're confused, don't worry about it. If you're bored, wait five minutes. It just keeps flowing and, like a river, seems reliably predictable but perennialy fresh. I loved it. And the narrator, by the way, is perfect.

eating new york

liked it. Honest and fun read. one doesn't need my words. read the book, not my review.

Lovely story marred by terrible narration

This is a great memoir by a wonderful writer and reviewer. I had to stop because the narrator was so bad. Really a shame.

Deliciously Delightful

This was the best audiobook! I enjoyed the narration and the pace of the book. Each course with wonderful anecdotes was wonderful. Highly recommend!

Fun.

Not pretentious or precious. A delight from the best writer at the New York Times.

Disappointing

The narrator of this audiobook was not up to the material. He seemed not to have any familiarity with the topics, i.e. food and literature so his reading was awkward. In addition, not every sentence required that a word be emphasized but he did that anyhow, making for a stilted “interpretation.” Finally, the voices he chose to use to evoke other cultures and women were weak and embarrassing. I hope that the author has not listened to this audiobook as it does not do justice to his work.

This is a weird book full of weird sex references.

I listened to an interview about this book and it sounded amazing. So I decided to listen to it. It ended up being full of weird examples of food being likened to sex or sex being likened to food. The writer shares a lot of his love of food in New York City instead of exploring food culture at large. I’m sure someone will love this book. I was not that person.

Somewhat boring story

Never could quite get into the story. Came across as a collection of facts. Not interesting