So often I could picture Tucci with his sly wit and slightly curmudgeonly manner telling me these stories. (He loves poking fun at Meryl Streep, too.) Taste really was just an all-around fantastic reading experience that made me so hungry, and I, well, devoured it in no time. If you're wondering, other than the Tucc, it's Jeff Goldblum, Julia Child, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Javier Bardem. Because if you're coming to my dinner party, imaginary or not, you are bringing either a smashing dish or great conversation and a very expensive bottle of wine (come on, these particular guests have money). Anyway, I digress. Our relationship with fire and food has shaped us as human beings, it connects us in a unique way, to ourselves, the people we love and this beautiful planet we live on. It is a wonderful story of and told by a wonderful man through his food memories. It is as infectious as it is delicious, as funny as it is insightful. The only reason to put this book down, is to go cook and eat from it.” – Heston Blumenthal Taste tells the story of Stanley, from how his father was always the genial host of guests arriving to their house all the way through to how food shaped the man he became. Stanley tells of acting and finding local eateries near the sets. Eateries that became regular places that spawned friendships lasting to this day. Eateries that gifted Stanley, and by virtue of this book us, all the recipes he has gathered through the years. My bad I guess because I was hoping for more funny similarities about Italian Americans growing up!

An instant classic, Stanley Tucci's TASTE is as captivating, simple, charming and insanely moreish as the best Italian food. Take it to bed with you and you will fall asleep dreaming you're in Italy. But take it to the kitchen and you will find yourself using it as often as a pan or a peeler." –Stephen Fry His humor is readily apparent, though he also has had his share of suffering. Ones life is never all peaches and cream and though his seems at time magical, the food he's eaten, the places he's been and the friends he has made, there is plenty of bad with the good. And yes, I’d have sex with him. But I’d be just as happy to bring him home, only to marvel at the way he fills a room with style and grace and good smells. If I die before he does, I was Stan to write my eulogy. The way he is able to describe people in a light that is neither overly positive or negative, while still feeling like he gets to their core is impressive. In one paragraph, he describes his friend Claudia as slender, "but still eats pasta everyday,""chic without spending absurd amounts of money," and someone "who loves wine."Superb ... Establishes Tucci as one of the wisest and most generous personalities of our time' Daily Mail No, for some unknown reason, I feel more at home in the Italian Alps than I do in the brutal heat of Puglia. I like brisk autumns, snowy winters, rainy springs, and temperate summers. The change of seasons allows for a change in one’s wardrobe (I’m sartorially obsessed) and, most important, one’s diet. A boeuf carbonnade tastes a thousand times better in the last days of autumn than when it’s eighty degrees and the sun is shining. An Armagnac is the perfect complement to a snowy night by the fire but not to an August beach outing, just as a crisp Orvieto served with spaghetti con vongole is ideal “al fresco” on a sunny summer afternoon but not nearly as satisfying when eaten indoors on a cold winter’s night. One thing feeds the other. (Pun intended.) So a visit to Iceland to escape the gloom of what is known in London as “winter” was an exciting prospect. However, my greatest concern, as you can probably guess, if you’re still reading this, was the food.” Stanley loves good food, particularly Italian food, since his grandparents on both sides hail from the Calabria region of Italy. (watch his show, a tour through Italy, currently on HBO Max.) As charming and warm as the man himself. A wonderful mix of family anecdotes, the importance of food, the love of food and how we tie food memories to events, people and places.

Stanley Tucci is on my dinner party list. You know the one. When someone asks "If you could have dinner with anyone alive, who would it be?" My first answer is Stanley Tucci. But because my life is about food, I think of a whole dinner party, not just dinner. Taste was a delightful memoir by Stanley Tucci of his life through food beginning with growing up in an Italian family in upstate New York with many traditions surounding food. He lovingly describes how when he was growing up, his mother spent most of her waking time in the kitchen, which she does to this day. In Tucci's words, cooking for her is at once a creative outlet and a way of feeding her family well: Rome is another destination and Tucci explains what a true Carbonara is, its history and where to find “the best carbonara in a city of Carbonaras.” (chapter 8). We must eat pasta recipes that are approved by Italians!Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about his growing up in Westchester, New York; preparing for and shooting the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia; falling in love over dinner; and teaming up with his wife to create meals for a multitude of children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burned dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last. Before Stanley Tucci became a household name with The Devil Wears Prada, The Hunger Games, and the perfect Negroni, he grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the recipes and into the stories behind them.