The Importance of Lunch: The Importance of Lunch and Other Real-Life Adventures in Good Eating

Barbara Robertson is the author of Wilfrid Laurier: The Great
Conciliator and the co-author of The Well-Filled Cupboard.

In this book about food, John Allemang manages to be funny and serious
almost simultaneously, or at least in the same paragraph. He is
passionate in his loves and hates. Having pride of place in the latter
group are the nutrition freaks—those who view food as medicine, and
who have done so much to create tough pork chops and anxiety about
butter, among other things. Allemang also has a hatred of pretension,
and under this heading are Martha Stewart, stylish restaurant chefs,
food faddists, and photographers who turn food into art. But he is
equally generous in his enthusiasms, and among cookbook writers his
favorite is Elizabeth David (“her books were written to affirm the
value of pleasure”).

Allemang brings to his subject a great deal of experience, which
includes traveling and family life, and ranges from the Burger King to
hunting-and-gathering expeditions in multicultural Toronto. The book is
divided into short chapters on specific foods—such as blood oranges
(Sicilian great, Californian dull), tomatoes (good in season, otherwise
not), and chocolate (imperialistic and addictive)—and longer chapters
on large subjects (“Fads and Fashions,” “Kitchen Detail,” and
“Real Life”). Each chapter concludes with a few lucidly written,
mainly practicable, and very inviting recipes.

The Importance of Lunch is perhaps best consumed in small quantities;
it is a rich dish.