Would you like to learn how to make genuine Fettuccine Alfredo? Discover "the best restaurant in the world"? Create French-style lobster and Scottish-style curry? Hear the tragic truth about what happened to the Blue Bar at the venerable Algonquin Hotel? Find out why you should probably never pay $100 for a bottle of wine? Then help yourself to Everything on the Table, a tantalizing book that deftly combines the wittiest of Colman Andrews's musings about food with wonderful travel writing, amusing anecdotes about world-famous restaurants, recipes for an eclectic collection of irresistible dishes, and provocative commentary on food, wine, and American taste.Former restaurant columnist for the Los Angeles Times and food and wine columnist for Metropolitan Home magazine, Colman Andrews may be the most outspoken food writer in America today. Eschewing snobbery, fads, and fashions, he tells the plain truth about what and where we eat. Part curmudgeon, part connoisseur, all raconteur, he skewers Michelin three-star restaurants with the same ease that he celebrates the pleasures of seven favorite restaurants, establishments that range from an underrated hideaway in the Burgundian countryside to an unpretentious seafood paradise in Casablanca.And with recipes both plain and fancy you can make a French Apple Pie like that served in Hollywood's 20th Century-Fox commissary during the Golden Age of movies...an aromatic and cross-cultural Catalan Chili...Andrew's own specialty of Sweet Potato Vichyssoise with Three Kinds of Salmon...a hearty Spicy Salt Cod Stew that proves salt cod doesn't have to be chewy or salty...Joe Brodsky's Deep-Fried Steak, simply a great way to cook meat...or Puree de Pommes de Terre three-star style, as prepared at the revered Jamin in Paris.Then get ready to have your assumptions shattered as Colman Andrews delivers his no-punches-pulled advice on wine, "great" wine, and wine you can truly enjoy. He also provides a paean to the ordinary American hamburger, dares to smoke a cigar after dinner, tracks down the original Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing, and reproduces excerpts from a gossipy, zany notebook kept by a fabled restaurant captain named Camille who tells all about the rich and famous he served, including Humphrey Bogart, Orson Welles, Al Capone, Marlene Dietrich, and dozens of other celebrities. The result is Everything on the Table, a rich, sensuous, gustatory treat: writing that will make you laugh, get your juices flowing, and give you a raging appetite for wine and good, both fine and just plain good. Read Less