Mike Colameco’s Food Lover’s Guide to NYC
Wiley, $19.95
PBS and radio personality and former executive chef Mike Colameco knows his way around a restaurant — and New York City. In this impressive guide, Colameco offers his informed opinion about the best of the city’s eateries. He has dined at every restaurant in the book numerous times, spoken with the chef and owner, and spent time with them in the kitchen. He marvels at the concept of being able to eat “virtually anything from anywhere” less than an hour from Midtown. By comparison, he acknowledges that while “one can surely eat very well in Paris, it’s all about French cuisine there, and ethnic options are limited. … Who goes to Paris for Italian food or sushi?” Point taken. The more than 400 restaurants he has chosen were based on several criteria: They had to have a certain, as he says, “New Yorkness” about them (no national chains, franchises or theme restaurants); he prefers establishments where the owners and/or chefs are hands-on; and the restaurants had to reflect the personality and perspective of the owners and chefs. Each entry is lengthy, describing not only the food but also the ambience and overall personality. He includes sidebars on burgers, chocolate stores, wine bars and markets.
The Best American Travel Writing (2009)
Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $14
The 2009 edition is edited with an introduction by the noted writer Simon Winchester, author of “The Professor and the Madman” and “The Map That Changed the World,” among others. Writers include Caroline Alexander, Chuck Klosterman and Calvin Trillin. The publications represented are diverse, from the Oxford American, Esquire and The New Yorker to Slate, Travel + Leisure and National Geographic, as are each writer’s destinations, including Lagos, Georgia, Rome, the Mississippi River, Rwanda, India, Bolivia, Havana, Honduras, Damascus and even war-torn Darfur. The adventures feature the seemingly mundane (Orlando’s Disney World), the strenuous (swimming portions of the Northwest Passage from Greenland to Alaska, using Roald Amundsen’s account of his journey as a guide) and the surprising (New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport terminal). Series editor Jason Wilson observes that travel writing rarely is about a particular place but rather more about the person who is doing the traveling. The 25 tales in this fine addition to the series make that claim abundantly clear.
Seoul City Guide
Lonely Planet, $20.99
Seoul endured traumatic years throughout the 20th Century. In recent decades, though, conditions have been changing as the city reinvented itself as a modern metropolis with a population of about 11 million. The guide describes the city’s various neighborhoods; shopping (from traditional markets and street stalls to upscale department stores and swanky malls); eating, including various Korean specialties; drinking; and night life. It also contains useful sidebars such as one that tries to make sense of the baffling street address system (most streets have no name; the writers recommend that you do what the locals do: ask!). The book also includes a language section, a glossary and a pullout map.
Moon Handbooks: Baltimore
Avalon, $17.95
Baltimore often is called an underrated city. As the former Colonial trading port continues to evolve, it has begun attracting more visitors. Local author Geoff Brown nicely describes it as a Southern city in character but a Northern city in geography. “It’s a town of society teas and horse races,” he writes, “raucous street festivals and experimental music, and oddball characters and living legends.” What to see? This first edition mentions some of the highlights, including downtown and the Inner Harbor (the latter area is hailed as a model for urban renewal and, indeed, is credited with “saving” Baltimore from what was then considered irrevocable urban decay), the old neighborhood of Fell’s Point, Little Italy and the entertainment district of Federal Hill. Baltimore has a number of unusual museums, including the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum, the National Aquarium, Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum, Ft. McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine and the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House, a modest brick house in which a certain seamstress named Mary Pickersgill made two flags for the city’s Ft. McHenry during the War of 1812. The larger flag — at 42 feet long it was enormous — reportedly inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But because one cannot live on museums alone, Brown describes various places to eat, including where to find the best crab cakes — he calls the variety of crab cakes in the city “astounding” — and he even includes a primer on steamed crabs (“a nearly sacred Baltimore tradition”). He features a short sidebar on “deciphering Bawlmerese,” that is, understanding the speech patterns indigenous to white, working-class residents, which he evocatively describes as “a unique mix of a Southern drawl, an almost Cockney-like pronunciation of certain vowels and mangling of consonants.”
Travels to the Edge: A Photo Odyssey
Mountaineers Books, $24.95
This oversize photo-essay book by photographer Art Wolfe covers the people, wildlife and landscapes of the world, from Patagonia and Australia and South Georgia Island (that means penguins!) to Mali and Ethiopia to Iceland.
