Zingerman's Guide to Good Eating: How to Choose the Best Bread, Cheeses, Olive Oil, Pasta, Chocolate, and Much More » (None)

Ari Weinzweig is the founding partner of Zingerman's Community of Businesses, including Zingerman's Delicatessen, Zingerman's Creamery, and Zingerman's Bakehouse.

Hailed by the New York Times, Esquire, and the Atlantic Monthly as one of the best delicatessens in the country, Zingerman’s is a trusted source for superior ingredients — and an equally dependable supplier of information about food. Now, Ari Weinzweig, the founder of Zingerman’s, shares two decades of knowledge gained in his pursuit of the world’s finest food products: oils, vinegar, and olives; bread, pasta, and rice; cheeses and cured meats; seasonings like salt, pepper, and saffron; vanilla, chocolate, and tea.

Publishers Weekly

Weinzweig is a founding partner of Zingerman's, a famed Ann Arbor, Mich., deli. His guide instructs on how to shop, not how to cook, and he opens up a world of gourmet particulars: he tells not just how to select a good olive oil or a real balsamic vinegar from the thousands on the shelf, but explains the differences among varietal honeys like chestnut, eucalyptus and lemon blossom; hot-smoked and cold-smoked salmon; Spanish and Iranian saffron; dry-cured and brine-cured olives. Weinzweig, who has a certifiable obsession with artisanal products, is at his best describing the often painstaking processes that transform raw ingredients into culinary phenomena. If globalization has made many imported foods both more available and less authentic, Weinzweig's paeans to San Daniele prosciutto and Cabrales blue cheese do much to restore the romance of the table. Weinzweig occasionally waxes pedantic or obvious ("better fish tastes better"), but his mouthwatering brand of fanaticism speaks for itself. Does it make sense to spend money buying a book that simply impels you to increase your grocery budget by 50%? Well, as Weinzweig would have it, "good food is for everyone"; when it comes to the luxuries of the table, there's no disputing taste. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.