A Meal Observed becomes more than just another clever foodie book right around the time that author Andrew Todhunter orders his first round of drinks, and encounters his first disappointment. Todhunter is a participatory journalist who typically covers rugged outdoor sports, but for A Meal Observed, he considers the more civilized adventure of dining in a three-star Parisian restaurant. Todhunter writes about what he eats, where the food came from, what food means to the larger French culture, and how the fine-dining experience has changed in the home of nouvelle cuisine. He even abandons straight reportage at times for a more diary-like approach, as he describes what his wife is wearing, and how the evening out becomes a bit stressful when the lightweight Mrs. Todhunter gets an aperitif so potent that she can't stomach it.
It would be overwrought to suggest that A Meal Observed is about "eating" as a concept and an obsession, but though Todhunter's style is breezy and pleasantly digressive, this slim volume is fairly substantial. Todhunter's main topic is the restaurant Taillevent, a Paris institution for more than 50 years. Todhunter spent several months apprenticing in the kitchen before having his big dinner, which enables him to report knowledgeably on the tension between the restaurant's owner and its staff—a tension due in part to the peculiar pressure created when creative people are required to prepare the same meals day after day, and due in part to the way one of the cornerstones of French society has begun to crumble as rising generations show less interest in $500 dinners.
Todhunter writes with refreshing openness about the economics of the meal. He clarifies early on that neither he nor his wife has expensive tastes (or the means to indulge them), which makes him especially sensitive to the evening's minor flaws, such as a less-than-ideal table or a less-than-stellar fish course. But Todhunter also savors and eloquently describes the meal's sublime delicacies, contrasting the sensual delight to his own relatively austere upbringing in small-town America, where food was strictly functional and pleasure was eyed with distrust. In A Meal Observed, Todhunter doesn't just play food critic for a day; he shows how relationships to food can be altered by expectation and context, and he makes a yeoman effort to understand himself by breaking down his reaction to every chew and swallow.