The Law Reviewers Book Club - The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Gazpacho)

Kamp focuses throughout the book on the "holy trinity" of American food: James Beard, Craig Claiborne and Julia Child. He traces how their cooking evangelism in New York in the 1950's and 60's was the spark that lit the fires of America's passion for more sophisticated (and mainly French) cuisine. From there, he takes us to the West Coast in the 70's where Alice Waters begins the organic food movement at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Then he heads south to L.A. to cover the emergence of Wolfgang Puck, California cuisine and the unending fusion crazes of the 80's. Finally, he brings you through the roaring 90's and into the new millennium to witness the birth of the celebrity chef, the gourmet restaurant conglomerate and the Food Network (plus Giada DeLaurentis!).

Along the way, Kamp describes the origins of the Niman Ranch, Dean & DeLuca and even Starbucks. He dishes plenty of juicy gossip on just about all of the characters involved in here, but sometimes Kamp seems to be bending over too far backwards to let everyone say their side of the story. A more serious complaint is the fact that Kamp focuses on the coasts and all but ignores the development of food anywhere else. The development of Southwestern cuisine in Texas is glossed over in a few paragraphs and the largest organic supermarket in the country, Whole Foods, is only mentioned a few times. Dwelling deep in the heart of red state country, its hard not to notice a little bit of a blue state bias creeping in here.

Still, The United States of Arugula does an excellent job of cataloging how this country went from meat and potatoes to venison carpaccio with arugula frise for dinner. On our celebrity chef five gavel scale, where five gavels is Giada DeLaurentis preparing an osso buco and one gavel is The Frugal Gourmet reheating a TV dinner, we give The United States of Arugula four and a half stars or Rachel Ray making you an offer you can't refuse for $40 a day.