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Rating: 
Summary: The first 64 pages are useful
Review: The first 64 pages of this pocket book cover national and regional dishes as well as useful descriptions of cheeses, cold cut meats, pasta, wines, liqueurs, sweets and pastries and other specialties. This part of the book is the most interesting, for you can find useful information, e.g. "Brunello di Montalcino: Tuscany. One of the finest wines. Red, full-bodied, dry, aged for 4 years." or "Speck: Trentino Alto Adige. Smoked raw ham, very lean and surrounded by a layer of fat."
The rest of the book is normal stuff. You get 18 recipes to try at home - I am Italian and dare say they are not perfect - then you get some useful phrases and at the end of the book there are two gastronomic glossaries, Italian/English and English/Italian. It says "dictionary" but there aren't any IPA transcriptions, just the genders explained by means of the letters m, f, or pl. for the plural form, and for the Italian pronunciation you get an imitation of it, a spaghetti-English and not a perfect one, e.g. intossicazione alimentare: eentos-seekats-yohnay alee-mayn-tahray, which makes me wonder why travelling people shouldn't be aware of the phonetics rule which makes a language alive.
If compared to the Collins "Italy: A Visual Phrasebook and Dictionary", this pocket menu reader could be improved, and that's why I gave this product only three stars.
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