Page 45 Review by Stephen
In Conclusion:
"Sprouts are fool's noodles.
"Don't trust smooth food.
"I have a hunch about croissants.
"Don't eat your own eggs."
Good call! It may seem like recycling - or something equally admirable, ecology-wise - but it probably breaks several HFEA guidelines or mandatory laws. Laws appear to be quite mandatory at the time of typing.
Every other non-mandatory law, rule or regulation of Food or Ablutionary Etiquette has been loudly breached in this ridiculous book and we soundly and roundly applaud! Hooray for throwing caution to the wind, kicking common sense to the curb and good taste into the gutters of genuine good will instead.
Hanawalt has all the good will in the world and here seeks to disseminate that and her recondite knowledge like our very own, much-loved Professor Lizz Lunney, with true scientific and in-depth analysis as when sacrificing her own personal pleasure to make a thorough investigation of New York's high-sugar, fat-saturated fast-food street vendors solely for her readers' edification and long-term biological benefit.
I cannot begin to tell you how funny it is, and that's my main problem. Hanawalt sets up her jokes so well in advance with relatively po-faced matter-of-factism or equally dead-pan facetiousness that it would take me paragraphs to quote. Plus I no longer have the faintest idea which elements of her exclusive behind-the-scenes, hourly diary, day-in-the-life reportage of Wylie Dufresne's Lower East Side Restaurant's operations are true, True, "true" or mere off-the-cuff whimsy.
All I can do is warn you well in advance not to read this while handling heavy machinery because it's is a convulsive-laugher liability:
La la laaaa.... (reading with interest)
La la laaaaaaaa... (white wine now spuming like a whale's exhalation through my nose)
There are Q&As, top tips and food-photography terminology neologisms. If I've included that in the interior art here it's worth clicking on to blow up.
Lisa does like to travel and has much to impart, like Katriona Chapman's thrillingly informative KATZINES, These bits I'm more inclined to trust for basic veracity, but my metaphorical pinch of salt has been safely stuffed away into my mental hand-luggage just in case.
When visiting an animal sanctuary, Hanawalt manages to pet a pet sloth, who may or may not mind this attention - who is to tell unless you wait five years and three months for its physical reaction?
Then she swims with miniature otters which "have been bottle-fed and hand-raised. That means we'll get to touch the heck out of 'em!" Their synchronised squeaking gives her an all-time heavenly high which she may never be able equal. I'd like to be covered in wet, furry otters forever, please. They can nibble at my neck as much as they want. I will buy them ice cream and spiders.
But basically, this: Hanawalt appears to be permanently hungry and without any sense of self-control. I infer that her trip to Las Vegas with attendant boyf was paid for either by Lucky Peach Magazine or by the Cosmopolitan Hotel wherein she discovers Total Buffet Abandon (officially endorsed medical syndrome as of this review). Whilst suffering from Total Buffet Abandon you can do any goddamn thing you want. You can pile your plate high with everything on offer, mix ridiculously incongruous, mouth-destined dainties or expect a chef to serve them all up in an omelette and no one will complain. Not even Cosmopolitan's PR manager Ranata for whom gluttony is either par for the course or a word long-eradicated from her dictionary.
"Look, I wish I could say we went insane and blew hundreds of dollars and then earned it all back! But in reality we bet low, made modest winnings, and basically broke even. Eating is the only thing I like to do to excess. I choose to gamble with my guts!"
What goes in must come out, and no restaurant meal would be complete without a trip to the toilet. Some are so squeamish about public restrooms that they line the toilet seat with toilet paper. Lisa suggests twigs instead, which you can gather, arrange and then nest on. It's a subject she returns to, including her fear of being caught nesting. I really cannot show you that page. She also imagines travelling through time to see how they did it in the olden days or what spectacles lie in store for us in the future.
Best of all are her stabs at new slogans for multinational corporations' advertising campaigns, like Nike's "Just Do It":
"Just fucking goddamned do it and be fucking done with it already"
I can't quote the next line, crossed out, but it's the funniest in the book.
We perversely began at the end with this review, just as we purposefully conclude it with a reference to its origin because I can no longer discern rhyme from reason, a sheep from a cow, or what's coming out of my brain.
That's now been clinically diagnosed as The Lisa Hanawalt Effect.
It's as if she turns the world upside down, gives it a damn good shake and sees what falls out.
