UNDERCOOKED

A comic describes his lifelong love affair with food.

“A good meal gives me more happiness than almost anything in life, including sex, money, and sex,” Ahdoot writes in this collection of humorous essays. Later, he adds, “I’m probably the best comedian in the country with a deep obsession with food, so that’s something, right?” Much of the narrative describes how he got that way. Unfortunately, the book is like a restaurant that can’t keep good chefs because the offerings vary wildly in quality. As the middle of three boys, Ahdoot was the only child in their Iranian Jewish household who shared his father’s love of fine cuisine, a passion his father maintained until the oldest son died of cancer. Ahdoot’s parents then turned to religion and frequented “subpar kosher immigrant eateries…with fluorescent lighting, sticky menus, and the smell of ferment.” Nonetheless, the author’s passion for food intensified and led to the adventures chronicled here: his time as an intern at the Spotted Pig, a high-end restaurant for the “culinary daredevil, someone who chewed first and asked questions later”; breaking up with an actor because he couldn’t deal with her dietary restrictions; his experiences hunting, which he describes in a sequence about an elk hunt, where he reveled “in opening the eyes of lifelong hunters to the joys of the discarded bits,” including “the animal’s ultimate delectable—the heart.” Essays about Ahdoot’s family are pleasurable, but the rest are superficial and rely on painful attempts at humor. A reader’s appreciation of this book will depend on reactions to lines like, “If the Nazis could get used to mass murder, I could get used to hunting.” Attempts at memorable food descriptions fall flat, as when the author notes a “magical saffron panna cotta that coated and comforted my tongue like a dairy cashmere sweater, leaving wisps of the Orient in its wake.” However, readers who enjoy pagelong accounts of messy bowel movements won’t be disappointed.

Some chapters are well-prepared entrees. The others? Send them back.