HKFE


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Book reviews for "HKFE" sorted by average review score:

Heaven's Fury on Hell's Cafe
Published in Paperback by Publish America, Inc. (September, 2002)
Author: Erika Michelle
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A Moment In Time Kind've Read!
Heaven's Fury is a book not to be missed! As predicted in the Bible, the future is now at hand, in this must read novel by gifted writer Erika Michelle.

Midwest Book Review - frightening modern day parable
This is a modern day parable of the End Times and Rapture of Christian believers as documented in the Word of God. Erika Michelle has taken quotes from the Bible and created a lesson for us all in the persons of Sam and Joe.

Sam and Joe are both young men, friends all their lives, but they look at life in quite a different way. The main character, Sam, drinks too much and dabbles in the drug scene. Despite misgivings, Joe allows Sam to drag him down into the gutter with him early on. These young men are introduced to evil in the form of Ed, a drug dealing kingpin who travels in the underground party circuit. It's not a pretty life and the author paints the evils and dangers with a broad brush. Their story is frightening and disquieting.

Sam and Joe are taken in by Ed and his cohorts Lucie and Dracula. They party at New York's premier underground club, Hell's Cafe. In order to partake of the "fun" at Hell's Cafe, patrons are required to receive a certain mark on their hands. Sam accepts the mark. An anxious Joe does not. And thus begins a nightmare of dissolution and destruction for them both.

The author made me fear for these two young men who are essentially unworldly despite their "party hearty" outlook. Their fondest dream is to make it big with their garage band. They find much more as their association with Ed continues.

Life, death, good, evil, and the Lord's return to the Earth wielding His sword of destruction on Evil are among Sam and Joe's experiences. Erika Michelle sets the scene and the mood well, and takes the reader with her as we witness Heaven's Fury on Hell's Cafe. Readers will discover that Christian believers are not and cannot afford to be wimps. It takes the highest form of human courage to overcome the evils of this world, the kind of courage demonstrated by the Living Jesus and a tortured death on that cross so long ago. The author's message, as I took it, is that Hell's Cafe cannot win the battle, but the evil doers keep on trying.

Ivan & Dora Cain authors of "THE YEAR 2012."
This book is a masterpiece. Erika has captured the everyday life style of the street people, and has been able to deliver them without the vulgar language, and discriptive crime and violance. She has expressed the end time prophecy in a proper and believable manner. In my opinon she has done the Bible prophecy a great service.Well done Erika!


FLAVOR OF THE DAY CAFE 4
Published in Mass Market Paperback by Simon Pulse (01 March, 1998)
Author: Elizabeth Craft
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Great book.
Just wanted to say that this was an awesome book! Her characters are so realistic, and you can kinda relate to them. Does anyone know if there's a book number 5? I'd be very interested. We are totally left hanging!

This Series Rocks!
OMG! Mz. Craft, where iz the fifth book? I can't find it on Amazon dot com, and I'm DYING to know what happenz! I have to know who Blue decided to call! Pleez, finish this series, or else get this website in order, and tell them to make the next book available to us readers! We're dying here, it's a TOTAL cliff hanger. To those of you that haven't read this book, MAKE SURE YOU CAN FIND THE FIFTH BOOK BEFORE YOU START READING ANY OF THEM!

My Flavour of The Year
I thought this book was the best book i have read in a long time . It relates to me as i'm about the same age. If you are a teenager and are thinking of buying this book i would advise you to. The plot gets especially good at the end and i am reading the next one at the moment .


The Flying Biscuit Cafe Cookbook: Breakfast and Beyond
Published in Paperback by Longstreet Press (December, 2002)
Author: April Moon
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Delicious
April Moon's cookbook captures the essence of what it means to be nourished by the Flying Biscuit Cafe, an anchor in its neighborhood and the primary reason Atlanta's suburbanites "outside the perimeter" even know where Lake Claire/Candler Park is located.
The recipes for simple, nutritious comfort food all have a delicious twist. Moon even knows what ingredients to combine with collard greens so that my husband, who doesn't otherwise stomach collard greends, relishes each bite.
That she shares her recipes -- yes, even for her famous biscuits, albeit with hesitation -- is a gift to all who no longer live close enough to enjoy the meals AT the cafe, but will for years savor the chance to bring the scents and flavors alive in our own kitchens.

Just like the restaurant!
To those of you from Atlanta who have visited the Flying Biscuit Cafe, you will know how fantastic the food is - it's warm, satisfying, and hearty- without being heavy or fatty. The cook book is simply an extention of the cafe - the recipies are easy to follow, discriptive, and taste just like the restaurant. They include all the signature recipies: flying biscuits and roasted potatoes with moon dust as well as ones I've never tried. I would recomend this book to anyone who enjoys cooking warm, satisfying food.

Best Biscuits every year!
This amazing little cafe in Candler Park has become a local landmark. The friendly casual atmosphere, consistent quality, and creativity make this a must for visitors to the city, and a very regular place for the locals. Every year they win the 'Best Biscuits' title in the Creative Loafing 'Best of Atlanta' issue, and their biscuits really are a sight to behold.
For some reason April Moon and Emily Saliers (yes, the Indigo Girl) have decided to reveal their secrets in this incredible book. It has all of my favorites, like sweet potato pancakes, turkey sage sausage, peach blueberry cobbler, and of course - flying biscuits. After a dozen absolute failures trying to make these biscuits I've found a couple of tricks 1) don't use a metal bowl, 2) When the recipe says not to overwork the dough, they are not kidding. Stir til all the milk disappears, and you're done. Stop right there, knead it, roll, ... Too much stirring will keep these things from rising at all. Now mine come out great, rise incredibly high like the real things!
If you're in town be sure to check it out. They have a new location near Piedmont Park, but I haven't been there. At the original location in Candler Park go early if it's a weekend. Get there by 10am and you can probably walk in. By noon the line is out the door and around the corner with over an hour wait.


Cafe Max and Rosie's: Vegetarian Cooking With Health and Spirit
Published in Paperback by Ten Speed Press (January, 2001)
Authors: Max Beeby and Rosie Beeby
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Cooking and eating vegetarian doesn't mean just dropping meat from your diet, it means "mak[ing] a nutritionally complete meal so that you are eating for optimal health." Max and Rosie Beeby, proprietors of Asheville, North Carolina's Café Max and Rosie's, have been serving up healthy and delicious vegetarian fare to locals and visitors since 1992 and proudly claim to have served over 80,000 veggie burgers. In Café Max and Rosie's: Vegetarian Cooking with Health and Spirit, the duo teaches you to cook tasty meals the whole family will eat and reveals some of their most popular recipes while encouraging you to consider the nutritional and social benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle.

Vegetarian fare has come a long way since the days of rice and beans and steamed veggies. Try whole grains like quinoa, amaranth, spelt, and millet in your meals. Millet Mashed Potatoes are healthier and more interesting than their plain counterparts (serve with a savory Mushroom Gravy). Since soy products have become mainstream, more options are available to the vegetarian cook. Tofu chili is just as hearty as the meat dish and has an extra zip from the addition of tamari and tahini. Try Braised Tempeh and Cabbage over rice or Japanese noodles. Substituting nutritional yeast for Parmesan cheese in Fettuccine with Vegan Pesto Sauce adds a "delicious but strong" flavor (adjust accordingly). The chapters on soups and salads are mouthwatering--the Garbanzo Cilantro Soup being particularly enticing. Rounding out Café Max and Rosie's are sections on making your own vegetable and fruit juices and smoothies, both for taste ("Georgia Peach") and for health ("Cure the Cold").

Max and Rosie are dedicated vegetarians who want to spread the word that "becoming a vegetarian does not mean being deprived of good-tasting food, it means stepping strongly in the direction of good health." Testimonials by friends and family are interspersed among Rosie's recipes and Max's artwork. If you aren't going to be near Asheville any time soon, pick up Café Max and Rosie's for the next best thing. --Dana Van Nest

Average review score:

AWESOME food! It will knock your socks off!
I just have to comment on this cookbook. The recipes it contains are absolutely delicious. I mean, it's unbelievable. Plus, the recipes are not complicated, and the food is very wholesome. You enjoy a plate of delicious food, and then your body feels great! (Not weighed down and greasy.) My favorite recipe out of this book is the Rhia Me Dear Rice Salad. This dish has been a minor obsession of mine ever since I lived in Asheville as a teenager. I now make it in my home regularly. The sauce that goes with it is DIVINE. It's vegetable bliss. If you want to eat healthfully, yet feel like you're cheating on yummy foods, get this cookbook. YUM!

The Real Thing...
It was October 1994 that I took those first steps into Asheville's vegetarian food grotto. You actually step down a few steps to get into Max & Rosie's Café, and most always greeted by a happy face behind the counter. It has the feeling of some Sufi café in London (if indeed there is such a place). Maybe that's because Max (that's not his really name by the way) follows the Sufi path, and IS from London. He's Rosie's husband. She's from Miami (and Rosie's not her real name either). She'll tell if you ask...

When you buy their book you'll learn more about their names and how they got started. It's a little bit of a mystery.

This is a review of Max & Rosie Beeby's first book.
 
It wasn't long after visiting the café that first time, that Rosie shared with me her desire to write a book. Our heritages both stem from New York City so she was easy for me to love immediately! She had already been a Macrobiotic food teacher back in Florida, and now serving the public she was ready. It made sense. However, being an active and dutiful mother, and Max doing his artwork (which the book and cafe is filled with) there was little time for book writing (and Rosie would like to stay away from the computer as much as she can.

However they were determined, and 7 years later Ten Speed Press published the book. Named after their restaurant (as in the tradition of Moosewood and other best-selling cookbooks), Cafe Max & Rosie's is a delightful and creative 178 pages of, not only recipes, but short statements of some of the people who have worked and visited the café, sort of like their guest book.

This book is a great "table top" addition. You can "feel" not only the essence of the food, but can also get the same "feel" of Max's artwork. Ah, Max, quite a mystic himself. With the rugged look of an English pub bouncer, he exhibits the gentleness of a Buddhist monk. I've spent a couple of nights talking with him late at night in their log cabin in the mountains.

Their book is divided: Part one called "Rosie's Cooking Classes," and part two "Just Juice It!" 

So, what distinguishes one cook book from another? Is it the amazing dishes? I think not, for as I have said of their restaurant, I say also of their book, "As Japanese culture has shown, how we eat--the ambience--is as important as the food itself."
 
The heavy parchment paper on which the words and artwork are reproduced can best be described as a table setting worthy of the love and purity contained within the recipes. And if you are indeed a food aficionado, page 56 offers a "Linguini with Fresh Garlic and Asparagus" recipe with tempeh, Portobello mushrooms, and spinach, that will soothe your senses, titillate your palate, and nourish you body. 

Is this the best cookbook I have read? I can't say, because I don't "read" cookbooks, I sense them. My sense of the Cafe Max & Rosie's book is that it is very "edible." It is a book worth having in your home....

Sw. Virato is editor and producer/publisher of New Frontier Magazine, Asheville Magazine, and Chattanooga Spirit, Bliss Magazine.

Cafe Max and Rosie's: spirited nourishment at many levels!
I am returning to order my sixth copy of this inspiring and entertaining cookbook for a Vegan friend. My kids (7 and 9 years old) even love the fare, and that's a blessing to a single, working parent with little time and very picky eaters. Ten Speed Press scores again -- who wouldn't want to devour these deliciously clever dishes sourrounded by the tale of Max and Rosie's timeless love? Spirited, playful, and best-of-all yummy, healthful eating. Congratulations Max & Rosie -- your family is about to get much, much bigger!


White Grass Cafe Cookbook
Published in Spiral-bound by McClain Printing Company (December, 1997)
Authors: Laurie Little and Mary Beth Gwyer
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Average review score:

Laurie and Mary Beth outdid themselves and share the wealth
I have been fortunate to have eaten at the White Grass Cafe and have always come away more pleasantly surprised than the time before. Laurie and Mary Beth have given us the keys to their kitchen with this book. The food is easy to make, healty, satisfy, heck, it's great. Add some music from Ottmar Liebert in the background, the smell of the wood stove, and you'll be in the West Virginia Mountains as the sun sets over the mountains. Check their menu (...). With the recipes in this book you can serve it up.

Like Momma Used to Make (only better)
This is, without a doubt, my favorite cook book! The recipes are simple and easy to follow. The results are special (ie: not your everday sort of mealtime selections) and delicious. The White Grass Cafe cookbook takes over top honors in our kitchen after knocking out a recipe book from a 1950s flour company. Standouts are a Sweet Potato soup that is tangy and soulful and a Walnut pie that is desert's version of heaven! Nothing much in this world beats having a mid-winter dinner at Whitegrass, but this cookbook is a close second!

Great food, Great people
This cookbook has the best variety of recipes I have ever seen! I love eating at the cafe, but when I am not in Canaan, I can have a taste of it in my house. Lots of good food that people with all different tastes will enjoy.


The Arbuckle Cafe: Classic Cowboy Stories
Published in Paperback by Yellow Cat Publishing (01 August, 1999)
Author: Fitzpatrick Val
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Ah, that all books should be of this quality...a real treat!
I've read some of the stories in this book 4 or 5 times. It's simply as authentic and well-written as it gets. I'm not an old-West fan at all, but a friend let me borrow their copy and now I'm hooked. I'm on my way to Colorado to visit some of the places FitzPatrick writes about. This book is a real treat! And it's beautifully done also - wonderful cover!

I also just finished FitzPatrick's other book, "Red Twilight." It's about his experiences with the Ute Indians. Also high quality and well-written - highly recommend.

Here's a book with atmosphere.
Here's a book with atmosphere. You can almost smell the campfire and the Arbuckles' Coffee brewing over it, right alongside the scent of horses, cattle, and sage. "The Arbuckle Cafe: Classic Cowboy Stories" creates its own setting and Val FitzPatrick's style is such that you almost hear the cowboys swapping the yarns around the fire. However, there's far more truth to the tales than the title suggests. Although FitzPatrick, a Colorado native born in 1886, missed trailing the big herds, he began cowboying at age 13 for the K Diamond Cattle Company. At age 14 he began working for the Two-Bar Cattle Company, which was "the goal of nearly every young man in the area." Cowboying left its mark: FitzPatrick learned to appreciate a good tale and how to tell it.

Recommended for students of western lore and literature.
Written by a genuine turn-of-the-century cowpuncher, The Arbuckle Cafe: Classic Cowboy Stories offers modern readers an informative and entertaining window in time to the great roundups, trail drives, humor and hardships of handling cattle in the American west of yesteryear. Also included are pioneer anecdotes of northwest Colorado told with all the drama of tales around a campfire. The stories include: Dogies, Dust, and the Drink; Hired Killers and Winter Underwear; The Great Elk Migration; The Hermit of Yampa Canyon, Riding with Butch Cassidy; Buzzards Don't Talk; The Wild Horse Man; Dirty Cattle Thieves; Tom Horn; Queen Ann Bassett, and more. Of special note is the epilogue: The Demise of the Two-Bar Rooster. The Arbuckle Cafe is highly recommended reading for students of western lore and literature, and anyone who has ever day dreamed of what it would have really been like to punch cows on one of the last frontiers of the American west.


The Candle Cafe Cookbook : More Than 150 Enlightened Recipes from New York's Renowned Vegan Restaurant
Published in Paperback by Clarkson Potter (22 July, 2003)
Author: JOY PIERSON
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Loved It
I loved cooking these recipes for my husband. And he loved eating them. Yummmmm.

Excellent Book!
This cookbook has quickly become one of my favorites. I love the corn-meal crusted tempeh recipe and the barbecued tempeh-chipotle burger. This book has an elegant variety of dishes that is great if you are having guests over. Also, in the middle of the book are some lovely pictures. I am so glad I added this book to my collection because the recipes are unlike any in my other cookbooks.

The best vegan book I've ever owned!
I have a total of 11 vegan cookbooks, and the candle cafe cookbook is the one I always use. I have been so disappointed in other vegan cookbooks because they either have hard-to-find ingredients, are too time-consuming to make, and are bland and boring. This cookbook is none of that! Almost every ingredient can be found at your local supermarket so it's not too expensive to purchase these items. Secondly, being a mom to a toddler gives me very little time to spend in the kitchen, and this book offers delicious meals that are easy and quick to prepare. And most of all, everything I have made from this book has been just like eating a gourmet meal! This is a MUST HAVE for everyone who is vegan or is even thinking about trying a vegan meal. I made the lemon tofu cheesecake with blood-orange glaze, and gave some to my carnivorous husband. He is the type of person who won't touch tofu with a ten-foot pole. And he ate every bite of it and thought it was great. I also made the chocolate cake with chocolate ganache frosting, and everyone LOVED it! Also, recently I prepared the seitan piccata with white wine and caper sauce. I only had the "chicken-style" seitan and used that instead. I have to tell you that it tasted like fried chicken in a wonderful brown gravy sauce! It was excellent! This cookbook is one of those "everyday" cookbooks, but with gourmet flavor. I am not a woman who likes to cook much, and I do not have much experience in the kitchen, but being vegan I have to cook my own meals once in a while, and I have been using this book every day, and every day I have a new favorite dish! I have been writing disappointing reviews on every cookbook I've tried, but this one I would give 10 stars if I could. If you are even thinking of buying this book, please do. You will not be disappointed!


Aloud : Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe
Published in Paperback by Owl Books (15 August, 1994)
Authors: Miguel Algarin, Bob Holman, and Nicole Blackman
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Poetry at its finest
In Aloud Voices From The Nuyorican Poets Cafe tons of poets came together and made an incredible book, many different races, cultures religions even languages, from skin heads to mothers, spanish people to africans, hermits, to loud mouths this whole book was great.

beautiful, honest, beautiful, beatific
i was shocked by the enormous beauty contained in the words - the simple english, spanish, or hybrid mixture words - how much emotion, how much skin and sweat can be placed within them. i am a poetry fan, but what i like is particular and peculiar. the poetry in this book speaks to and about human beings in the honest, skin-blood-bones-organs-nerves way that i feel has not been captured since the Beats. while i love sylvia plath, this poetry contains none of the almost ascetic, sterile, abstraction of most poetry, poetry like how you think "british" when you think poetry. this is tactile poetry, and though one may not personally relate to the writer, one would hope (I would hope) that the reader can relate to the words as they are placed, the emotion invoked and evoked by the words-plus-tone, by the very act of those very particular words placed together to create this poetry. this is where appreciation lies. this is where poetry is. this is turning feeling and thought and experience into sounds and words - into poetry.

Poetry as Language
Just last year, Miguel Algarin visited the campus of the University of Florida and performed some poetry for us. I never really understood poetry in high school, but that's because I was never exposed to such a book as Aloud and the style of the poetry slams.
This book begs to be performed and shared. The verses sing, scream, coerce and laugh off of the pages. I love the idea of "poetry as language" and hope there will be much more to come from the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe.

Poetry's not dead after all.


Fannie Flagg's Original Whistle Stop Cafe Cookbook : Featuring : Fried Green Tomatoes, Southern Barbecue, Banana Split Cake, and ManyOther Great Recipes
Published in Paperback by Ballantine Books (11 September, 1995)
Author: FANNIE FLAGG
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No longer do I put store bought food in a piece of Pyrex...
No longer do I have to put store bought food in a piece of Pyrex and take it to a family reunion. I am happy to say that I can make all the delicious food from 'down home". The biscuits, gravy, pies, chicken and dumplings, the list goes on and on, all are easy to make with a short list of ingredients. Now, if I could learn to talk southern...

Good Eatin' Is Death to Yankees
Back home in Georgia, we'd get together and eat. Sometimes, we'd eat each other, but mostly we ate Momma's fried chicken, some of Gladis's potato salad, and a mess of Mother Burnside's turnip greens. . .We'd eat until we was about to bust. . .then we'd have homemade ice-cream and watermelon cooled in the stream. . .then we'd sit on the porch and just talk. . .

Ms. Flagg's cookbook calls back those days, when the parson would stop by for Sunday Dinner, and us kids would be jealous and angry because the reverend would ask us a bible study question, and the child that got it right would get that last runner < a chicken leg for you Yankee readers>. . . and if we missed, that leg went to the parson, and we went just a little bit hungry.

Ms. Flagg's recipes are "comfort food." Read as "Southern Comfort Food." Need a snack? Sipsey's "Fried Green Tomatoes" will lift you to realms unknown. Depressed? Try the "Chicken 'N' Dumplings." Go to taste heaven you never dreamed existed! And you think you know bar-be-que? You don't know jack, sailor. . .In the south, it's bar-b-q. . . And bar-be-que starts with half a hog. . .Yankess don't have hogs, they have "pigs," and there, as Shakespeare observed, "lies all the diference."

Buy this book. . .Eat some "good eatin'"

You yankees come down, ya hear. . .you'll go home fatter, happier, and a li'll bit fatter. . .but that boild stuff y'all eat. . .never gonna taste good again. . .

Y'all just remember. . ."Secret's in the Sauce!"

bookworm

YANKEES, BEWARE! This will kill y'all.
Lots of folk have read "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe," by Fannie Flagg. Even more have seen the movie, "Fried Green Tomatoes" . I read Ms. Flagg's cookbook with delight, anticipation, more than a few hunger pangs, and a profound sense of relief that somebody, somewhere had the good sense to preserve these fine old dishes of the deep South and pass them on. Her recipe for "Chicken'n'Dumplings" matches the faded 3x5 card version I inherited from my mother almost to a tee. Her "Fried Chicken" is enough to send the health-conscious into a coma! Well, y'all. Welcome south. We fry things down here, but at least the food has some flavor and texture. Take "Fried Green Tomatoes," as one example. You can't "boil" green tomatoes; nor can they be broiled, roasted, or baked. Honey, they gots to be FRIED. But one bite, and your taste buds done boarded the glory train to paradise, 'specially if you wash it down with the "house wine of the south" , a big tall glass of homemade ice-tea.
Miss Flagg's cookbook brought back a comforting time of nostalgia, when momma's Sunday dinners were a treat looked for all week long, and us kids hated it when the preacher came by of a Sunday evening. It also brought back several dishes I thought had perished when the Interstate Highway system destroyed the back byways and unimproved roads that lead to the "old home place(s)" throughout the South. The ham and "red-eye" gravy recipe alone is worth the cost of the book, and even a Yankee girl can make it if she takes her time and doesn't try to "fix" it.
Salt abounds. Calories flourish. Fats lurk everywhere. And cholesterol and other nefarious substances are omnipresent. But the things that'll come out of your kitchen will amaze you, content your spouse, make your children smarter and more obedient, and fill your house with the smells associated with happier simpler times, when meals were shared by the family, enjoyed by all, and digested sitting on the porch with an old AM radio tuned to the only clear channel, and the night creeping up out of the ground.
Thank you, Ms. Flagg.


River Cafe Wine Primer, The
Published in Hardcover by Little Brown & Company (01 June, 2000)
Author: Joseph Delissio
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Joseph DeLissio, wine director of the venerable River Cafe in Brooklyn, New York, throws his Haut-Brion into the crowded field of wine books for people who know nothing about wine. This self-styled primer opens with a mission statement about being "straightforward, honest, unintimidating, informative, liberating, and--above all--enjoyable," but after a few pages it becomes clear that, for the author at least, wine knowledge is wieldable weaponry. When opening pages suggest rituals such as sniffing your empty restaurant glassware for chlorine/dishwasher odors to "send a strong signal that you are... serious," most novices may well start backing off. That is, if they haven't already been spooked by the discussions on wine terminology, investing, cellaring, restaurant lists, and wine auctions that occur in the first 60-some pages. It's a shame, because DeLissio is obviously informed, opinionated, and passionate about the grape. Fortunately, he more often delights with insider advice: a winemaker's signature on a bottle may actually decrease its value; beware 11 bottles in an auction lot (frequently indicating that the 12th was drunk and deemed unsuitable). The Burgundy chapter alone is worth the purchase price; it could serve as a Cliffs Notes summary for the Master of Wine exam. --Tony Mason
Average review score:

Good, but not exceptional
Delissio's "River Cafe Wine Primer" is a nice place to start for the beginning oenophile. It reads easily, for the most part, and never insults the reader. The author joins the "all things are possible" attitude, leaving the appreciation of wine to the reader, while providing guideposts for enjoyment. Never is the reader talked down to, but neither is the author willing to keep his advice on a lowest common denominator level.

This book has an insider's information and I found some of the restaurant and background info on par with Boudrain's "Kitchen Confidential", but with a dash more restraint. I'm not sure if the wine industry has the kind of dirt that Boudrain exposes, but the novelistic style of Delissio's book still makes it a worthy read.

Where this primer fails is not so much the fault of the book, but rather in its competition. Zraly's wine course book and MacNeil's "The Wine Bible" are superior. The Zraly book is very basic, while MacNeil's is far more thorough. One reviewer noted how well Delissio clarified the wines of France, but I found his tour to be more confusing than similar discussions in the other two books. The sidenotes and fun facts in Zraly, and the ebullient, "zest for life" attitude of MacNeil also take them one step above "The River Cafe Wine Primer".

Another significant lack is that due to the writing style and the book's layout, it doesn't function well as a reference. In other words, it wouldn't be a book I would reach for if I had a question. Delissio avoids naming names - his wine recommendations are more generalized. This works well for a book that will probably not go through several revisions, but again, it makes it harder to use for specific help.

A nice day read, "The River Cafe Wine Primer" is a fine addition for wine lovers who seek to round out their knowledge, but in a crowded market of wine books, there are other more essential books to add to one's library.

THE WINE BOOK THAT WILL SAVE YOU MONEY
While I have always liked wine I have always hated the arrogance of most people who sell wine. Be it the cocky wine shop clerk or the restaurant wine whatever you call them guys with the silly silver cup, they seldom make me feel like my opinion means anything. They make me feel stupid! That has all changed since I have read The Wine Primer. While I did not buy the Wine Primer, (it was a gift from a woman who has become my ex woman) I love the power and comfort it has given me.

Best of all this book saves me money. I didnt know wine shops give quantity discounts until I read it in the Wine Primer. I tried it out when I bought six bottles of wine in my local wine shop when at checkout, I asked if there was any multiple bottle discount- to my surprise there was, 10 % to be exact. I have
saved over a hundred dollars since I read of this tip in The River Cafe Wine Primer.
I like red wine with almost every thing I eat. Once at a well known restaurant I ordered a French red Bordeaux with my Tuna and was given a three minute lecture by "The Wine Guy" on how it
as a horrible match. Needless to say I was so intimidated I changed my order. Here I am I'm thirty four years old, I own my own buisness, my own home, repair my boat and car by myself, and coach a little leaugue soccer team, and I found my self embarrassed to have red wine with Tuna. Mr. Delissio says in his book that "the only palate one ever needs to impress is his own" and puts it in a way that you believe it.

There is a saying in the bible that if you teach a man to fish you will never have to feed him. The River Cafe Wine Primer has taught me how to let myself enjoy my own tastes, and after reading it I find that when it comes to wine I don't need any help. Best of all it keeps saving me money.
I recommend everyone learn how to fish and read this book.

a great wine primer
As a mere advanced beginner in the world of wine enjoyment, I find this book to be among the best I have explored to educate myself. It covers all kinds of really practical information from ordering wine in different types of restaurants to purchasing wine in retail stores, as well as more detailed information on types of wines. Imagine that you have a great friend or associate who knows the world of wine inside and out and you ask him to write down some advice for you, and you'll get an idea of the easy style you'll find here...only expanded tenfold. This book is laid out thoughtfully and is bursting with the kind of practical advice that can only reflect a deep love for the subject matter. I would highly recommend this book to both someone who is just beginning to explore and enjoy wines and also to those a little further along who are looking for depth of general knowledge.


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