If Anthony Bourdain was GQ, von Bremzen is AP History. Istanbul is a “water-lapped nostalgia factory” Paris is a “stern, unwelcoming finger-wagging abstraction of European civilization.” Her words are like a good recipe: spare, precise. Never will I scoop up mole in the same thoughtless way again. Or her painstaking pursuit of the most elemental Oaxacan mole: “I wrangled with this issue on an Oaxacan restaurant trail that veered from a coastal-style mole Amarillo of incendiary chiles costeños … starring (gulp) black iguana (tasted like chicken) to a luscious almendrado nutty with almonds and sweet-tart with raisins, capers and olives … back to a smoky ritualistic chichilo of the remote Sierra Sur highlands, a version hauntingly bitter and burnt because traditionally women made it for funerals while the coffin still sat in the house.” Eating it was an experience totally primal - bread and live fire.” Her own writing, though, is just as vivid: She manages to make the choleric history of crowded, stricken Naples as compulsively readable as a description of pizza at La Notizia, one of the city’s most revered purveyors: “The pie practically levitated off the table, blistered to perfection and honeycombed with tiny air bubbles…. She would make a formidable dinner party guest, offhandedly quoting Alexandre Dumas on Italian marketplaces or name-checking Joseph Brodsky about Istanbul’s “crooked, filthy streets.” She’s more comfortable writing outside of herself.
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