Salad Days: Penguin Special

Description

In Salad Days, Ronnie Scott interrogates our current obsession with food - and asks whether it's actually such a bad thing. Salad Days takes us via the world's best restaurants in Noma and elBulli, and more humble yet no less delicious restaurants and cafes in Melbourne, while interrogating how we use food to relate to one another, the particular joy of hearing about someone else's experience of a glorious meal (even via social media), and why members of gen Y are spending extravagantly on food when they can't afford real estate. Scott looks at the more challenging aspects of this conspicuous consumption as well - ethical eating, sustainability, class concerns. If food offers us a 'curious mixture between comfort and disturbance, staying put and going far', is that something to worry about, or to celebrate? Salad Days is a fascinating and lyrical look at a particular moment in our history and society, and an important contribution to an ongoing debate about how we eat.

Ronnie Scott is a writer for The Monthly, the Saturday Paper, The Australian, the Weekend Australian Magazine, The Believer, ABC Radio National and the NGV. In 2007 he founded The Lifted Brow, a freeform literary magazine, and he teaches creative writing at the University of Melbourne and RMIT. http-//instagram.com/ronalddavidscott