Foodie Book Review: Far Flung and Well Fed
R.W. “Johnny” Apple, Jr., who was the Chief Correspondent for the New York Times, and later, a passionate food writer until the end of his life and career, had the rare gift of being a great listener. He was the sort of hale and well met fellow who could make anyone think he was the most interesting person in the world. And he had, in spades as he might have said, what A.J. Liebling called the first prerequisite for a food writer, a good appetite. Er, make that a legendary one.
His book of food essays, entitled “Far Flung and Well Fed”, has been out for more than a year, but is a great read, and highly recommended. It contains more than 50 pieces around this country, Europe, Asia and South America, all of them informative and entertaining. If Apple didn’t know a subject when he tackled it, he did by the time he had written a piece on it.
He was an exhaustive researcher and terrific wordsmith. A piece by Apple invariably contained bits of information you never knew such as that each Hungarian consumes over a pound of paprika a year, or that the Croatian grape varietal Plavac Mali is a cousin of Zinfandel. And a description of dumplings at Din Tai Fun in Arcadia, Calif. as “gorgeous pleated things, fashioned from pastry of exquisite fragility”, is one of those lines any writer worth his salt would wish he’d written.
Apple was a loyal friend. I had only three meals with him; one in New York City, on his home turf, another in the San Gabriel Valley, and one gargantuan five steak house dine around here in Vegas. But during the meals, we exchanged stories, and he treated me warmly. Later, he did cite me in his article in the New York Times, referring to me as “a top Las Vegas food writer.” Praise from Caesar is praise indeed.
Apple was from Akron, Ohio, and was quick to tell you that. He also was a Princetonian and proud of it, also proud of his Mitteleuropa roots and his considerable girth. (Apple was the Anglicized version of Apfel.) He went almost everywhere with his loyal and adoring wife, Betsey, who regrettably, I did not meet. She’s cited in nearly all of his essays.
I’ll never forget that dinner in Vegas. We ate at Charlie Palmer Steak, Delmonico, Circus Circus’ The Steak House, Craftsteak and Prime, and I sat, open jawed, as he devoured almost everything, at the robust age of 69. Three years later, he passed away from cancer. His big heart, it seems, remained intact until the end.
This is a wonderful book that anyone who fancies himself as a foodie simply needs to read. Like the great M.F.K. Fisher, this isn’t just great food writing, it is great writing, period. Apple covered ten presidential elections for the Times, spent three years in Vietnam, and covered an impressive variety of other subjects during his long career as well.
In the book’s foreword, written by The Atlantic Monthly’s Boston-based Corby Kummer, we learn of Apple’s legendary expense account, which was second to none in the business. “I nearly fell off my chair when he told me”, writes Kummer.
Apple’s generous stipend took him to places like Singapore, to eat the world’s best “and safest” street foods, to the bouchons of Lyon, Venice for the freshest fish, and to Bawlmer (Baltimore) to pound crabs with a mallet.
“Far Flung and Well Fed” is a book that will make you envious, hungry and exhilarated. It’s a testament to a great man with a great appetite.
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