Rating: 
Summary: Cutesy book, but the recipes are good.
Review: Hesser, a food writer for the New York Times (All The News That Fits, We Print) tells the story of a courtship, with recipes. If you're in the mood for simple, sweet entertainment, this book will fill the bill.The tale hangs on entertaining and feeding her fiancé-to-be-and- eventually-husband and friends. It's light, amusing and charming but the recipes are best of all. Unlike a lot of books like this, they are delicious and really work. I especially recommend her Roquefort Balls and Chocolate Dump-It Cake.
Rating: 
Summary: writer thinks she is wonderful, but I have to disagree
Review: I wanted to like this book since I so enjoy books that center around food(such as diane mott davidson and tamara myers.) I could not finish reading this book due to boredom and frustration. I could not understand the main character's complaints about her boyfriend and her friends. Why anyone would want to date or marry her is beyond me.
Rating: 
Summary: Truly awful
Review: If you love Sex and the City, then you'll probably adore this book. If you think women obsessing about the way they look to men (or the food they eat with said men) is neither attractive nor interesting, then don't even start reading this sappy, shallow book.
Rating:
Summary: A horrible book by a horrible person
Review: I stopped reading this after a few chapters. I didn't even care what happened with Mr. Latte. The pair of them are too annoyingly perfect for me. Even her faults are too perfect, as if she needed to create an interesting personality by admitting that, yes, she, too, can make mistakes. Little ones. Fortunately, they don't get in the way of her beautiful life in "New York's most fashionable restaurants with discerning foodie friends." Gag. This was a gift from someone who thought I'd enjoy a book about life as a food writer, since I love to cook and daydream about becoming a food writer myself. I returned it for a real cookbook. I can only hope there's more to the food world than what Amanda Hesser sees.
Rating:
Summary: Boring and shallow
Review: "Looking for Mr Latte" is a good example of bad food writing, or bad writing in general, especially of the over-exposed celebrity genre. Too much information (who needs to know about her pretty thong from Coquette?!) but precious little substance. This book was required reading for me (don't ask) so I had to finish it. Torture. I hated nearly every page of it. I've read Hesser's features in the NYT food section. I had long ago accepted that she lived and worked in the ego-centered, elitist food world of NYC and is a product of classic French cooking and its innate snobbery. However, I figured I still had a lot to learn from her and had trained myself to skip over the pap. But this, wow--I never realized just how incredibly self-absorbed and shallow she really is until forced to read her petty, annoying complaints and catty comments about people who don't cook, eat, dress, talk, entertain, decorate or just plain look like her. Her analysis of dating and relationships is so simplistic, it makes me feel sorry for both her husband and her. She considers it an epiphany that she should be nice to people in the kitchen, like, not insult them or boss them around. She thinks she's grown when she realizes that it's not okay to force Tad to wash dishes exactly like she does. She thinks we'll side with her when she condescends to her grandmother, who refuses to order the right items on a menu and who still remembers a time when food was scarce. Heaven forbid that a woman think for herself or respect the notion of humility. I'm glad that I won't ever have to host a party where Hesser is a guest, or cook for her narrow ass and even narrower point of view. It's a shame her writing doesn't show more depth, for her recipes are well-written and worth trying, with none of that boring, sterile "Cook in a large pan" language. They may seem pretentious, but they can be quite good. As for her personal stories, we can only hope that Hesser stops writing this drivel or else grows up before she fobs another book on us. Perhaps some day soon, she'll outgrow that I'm-so-cool-because-I-eat-expensive-food-with-smart-and-beautiful-people attitude that seriously limits her writing. For a much wiser and tender, interesting and honest story of life as a professional cook, read Pepin's The Apprentice.
Rating:
Summary: Successor to MFK Fisher? Not!!
Review: I am sorry to say after reading this book that I am officially "over" Amanda Hesser. This one is cute at the beginning, & grows repetitive by the end. Since her writing has improved immeasurably since these were published, it's pretty sad to read this shallow, pretentious account of a somewhat uneventful life. She holds up her small professional cooking experience as though it makes her more qualified than others, then complains about why she couldn't prepare a simple meal in alone in someone else's kitchen, implying that it was somehow their fault! When she whines about Mr. Latte's taste (not bad) or behavior (relaxed) it's hard to sympathize -- one wonders if she's trying to invent reasons to feel sorry for herself. Her subtle put-downs of people far more accomplished than herself (e.g., Ismail Merchant, Cook's Illustrated) and of American cuisine in general are sad and show poor judgement. It appears that her family's meatloaf is more sophisticated than the rest of America's! -- Underwhelming, to say the least.
Rating:
Summary: Oh, my. Why is this a book?
Review: Ugh. After suffering through years of Ms. Hesser's coy food columns in the NYT magazine, and her ghastly opinion pieces and recipes in the Wednesday Dining section of the Times, it's dispiriting to think that some editor felt they should be preserved between hardcovers. One can only hope that Mister Latte (oh, and it even hurts to TYPE that) turns out to be one of those Neanderthal husbands who refuses to let his wife work.
Rating: 
Summary: In the tradition of Elizabeth David or Molly Dodd
Review: I bought this book the day it came out. For at least a year, I saved Amanda Hesser's columns from the Sunday NY Times in a little file folder, and followed the charming story of her romance with Mr. Latte. This book is collection of these columns I had saved (and a few that I missed). It is really like a wish come true for me. Now if only someone will release the entire The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd series on DVD... Hesser has a way of making food personal, and this is her most personal work to date. It is not solely a cook book, it is a story of her relationship and eventual marriage, interpreted with recipes. And the recipes work. The recipes are varied -- some are haute cuisine, and others are comfort food. The technique is generally accessible to anyone. If you never felt successful about cooking duck, try the Ginger Duck -- it is fool proof and impressive. The Dump It cake also works like a charm, but no one will think it anything but homemade. My favorite chapter is Fine Dining in the Sky, and in it Hesser prepares her own provisions for a trans Atlantic flight. As a fellow neurotic traveler, I too worry that my last meal might be some sort of dreck, and I agree with the importance of having the cocktail while in flight. How many cook books present picnic food to bring on the plane? The chapter in which Hesser and her fellow Manhattanites gather together after the 9/11 attacks is very moving, the food is simple, and you know, you really know this is how it played out. There are funny moments, too, like the party where she tries to use Julia Child's French Chef recipes for a party and realized some of Julia's wisdom is eternal. It is easy to dismiss this book as facile, but the recipes are good, and the narrative really works. It is a bit precious with the Bendel-esque drawings, but it seems a small complaint. Hesser might be the only cookery writer working today in the tradition of Elizabeth David or MFK Fisher, and while that is a shame, I'm glad she is doing it. You should also check out The Cook and the Gardener -- another very personal cookbook by Hesser.
Rating: 
Summary: Just average...
Review: I started this book with high expectations and at first I was happy with what I found: lighthearted and fun stories. But the tone quickly deteriorates and becomes repetitive and Hesser starts to seem pretentious and shallow. These essays might not be so bad if they were printed separately in a weekly column but they are a bit much for one sitting. If you are not up to date on the latest NY eateries, or if you don't care about the latest NY eateries, you will be a little bored.
One thing that this book was good for was airplane reading.
Rating:
Summary: i hope she values the people in her life....
Review: after reading this book, i was touched by how much people care about this skinny-minny. In particular, Mr. Latte's family seems to have taken her in, provided her with vacations, furniture, and most importantly, a family. I was saddened to read that Tad's mother had passed away in July. I would have been much more interested in reading a book about this talented, CARING, woman who could cook!
| 
