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    Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture
    Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture
    Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture
    Audiobook8 hours

    Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture

    Written by Dana Goodyear

    Narrated by Jane Jacobs

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A new American cuisine is forming. Animals never before considered or long since forgotten are emerging as delicacies. Parts that used to be for scrap are centerpieces. Ash and hay are fashionable ingredients, and you pay handsomely to breathe flavored air. Going out to a nice dinner now often precipitates a confrontation with a fundamental question: Is that food?

    Anything That Moves, a behind-the-scenes look at foodie culture, is simultaneously a humorous adventure and a serious attempt to understand the implications of the way we eat. This is a universe populated by insect-eaters and blood drinkers, avant-garde chefs who make food out of roadside leaves and wood, and others who serve endangered species, pets, and Schedule I drugs-a cast of characters, in other words, who flirt with danger, taboo, and disgust in pursuit of the sublime. Behind them is an intricate network of scavengers, dealers, and pitchmen responsible for introducing rare and exotic ingredients into the marketplace and, ultimately, bringing them to the family table. Highly entertaining and deeply revelatory, Anything That Moves explores the raucous, strange, fascinatingly complex world of contemporary American food culture, and the places where the extreme is bleeding into the mainstream.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 14, 2013
    ISBN9781452687940
    Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture

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    Reviews for Anything That Moves

    3.5/5

    50 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I've heard the term "foodie" being bandied about, but I guess I didn't know it referred to such a limited, and exotic, subset of American culture. The term called to my mind the endless friends with food blogs and glorious Pinterest walls who pipe homemade coffee-flavoured icing onto cupcakes that put me to shame. In picking up this book, I was prepared for a casual romp through the new domesticity. Instead, I was kidnapped and shuttled through the back-alleys of hipster haute cuisine into a world I barely knew existed.As the title suggests, there are people in this country who will eat anything, and seek out the utmost in oddity and grotesqueness for the thrill of the experience. So-called poverty foods have clawed their way up from being staples of necessity in far-flung global cultures to claim high-culture status on the plates of the new elite. Goodyear devotes each chapter to a specific type of edible horror, from the relatively banal raw milk trend to more indigestion-invoking combustibles like insects, entrails, and the foodie's crowning glory, balut, a whole duckling still inside its egg. She paints this palette of acquired tastes in an exquisitely beautiful (if occasionally high-brow) writing style. If you're a vegetarian and entomophobic like me, then I hope you have an iron stomach. If you're anthropologically-minded, you may be disappointed that while Goodyear delves into the rationale behind why some of these foods came to end up on American plates, she offers little analysis of how the foodie subculture fits into the larger scheme of the nation's fast-food-loving, weight-watching, allergen-intolerant, environmentally-conscious, and animal-friendly eating spheres. But if you're one of these people or aspire to be, you'll love the trip, marijuana-infused chocolate and all.
    • 3/5
      3.5
      a squeamishly interesting book about wildly, crazy, adventurous eaters! I have to admit there is not one food item in this entire book that I'm even remotely interesting in trying, seeing or smelling, but it sure was fascinating learning about how many people out there are pushing against convention and boldly going where not many of us would dare. More power to 'em, including this brave author who doesn't shy away from fearless eating herself!

    • 3/5
      I received this book for free as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program; this review is not affected by this fact.A little bit of a nitpicky point - from reading other reviews, it appears that many of the chapters were in fact previously-published articles. Each one was fine, but I think as a book, it would have benefited from a bit more honing of a central point, so it didn't feel so much like a collection of essay. Just my opinion, but it would have improved my read.That being said, I did enjoy it. The "gross foods" part, of course, was fascinating (not sure I could eat a chicken-in-an-egg, especially with the textural description). The author did a great job at getting to (or at least appearing to get to) the underbelly of various areas of the industry. As much as I know that food service is never easy money, I was tempted to go truffle importing.
    • 3/5
      2.5 stars

      I have to agree with some other reviewers. I have mixed feeling about this book. The book is more like a collection of essays/interviews. I found many disagreements with the interviewees, they are very biased. Also, most of them if not all are from the west coast mainly California and Las Vegas.

      Being Chinese, I agree taste is cultural. Ignorance makes the food better. I didn't know Hasma is dried frog fallopian tubes until now. But that doesn't stop me from eating it again, once you have developed a taste for it, it doesn't matter what that food actually is. So, not telling the customers what they are eating is a great idea.


      I think the book would be better if it puts its focus on the food rather than the people. I don't care what they were wear or what brand their purses were. I would like to know more about the food like how it tastes, smells, textures etc. I had to google some of the foods, a brief definition would be nice. Love the topic though.

      Received the book free through Goodreads First Reads.
      Won 10/15 Received 10/24
    • 4/5
      A very interesting behind the scenes look at an ever evolving food culture. Goodyear takes us through the famed critics and restaurants where the creepiest crawlers became the sought after status symbol of food, if only temporarily. Raising a daughter who will try anything, I can really appreciate that some of the so-called delicacies of the 60s and 70s are now prohibited! A truly enjoyable read, even for those that aren't quite as adventurous.
    • 4/5
      Small eeekkkkkk----but absolutely fascinating. The last couple of sentences in the book sort of summed up most of it for me---how can people eat such things? Of course as a vegan it does make it all the more amazing to see the efforts people will go to to be different. I would not be able to be in the same room/building with the vast majority of this food. The book was extremely readable because the author got so in touch (taste?) with her subject matter!!
    • 3/5
      As an avid reader of 'foodie'-books and books about food history and culture worldwide I really looked forward to read this book. I have some limited experience in the area that is the focus of this book, but from an academic and historic perspective more than personal adventures. As promised, the book talks about mostly Californian chefs, importers, eaters, and suppliers of food of the most unusual sorts, the ingredients on the edge of current culture. The books is well-written, but after half of it I got bored. It seemed as if she was writing a narrative about her friend, but she didn't seem to put it into the larger food culture and its changes in America. She mentions things that are happening in the rest of food culture here and there, but she doesn't explain to the reader how it is all connected. It is more like reminisceces and descriptions of 'guy 5 foot 8 inches tall with goatee that likes to get his hands bloody while stuffing intestines with live ant eggs illegally imported from Mexico while listening to Grateful Dead'... or something like that. Lots of detail, but not much structure here. One of the subtitles is 'the making of a new American food culture', but in reality the real remaking of American food culture during the same timeframe had much more to do with people buying from farmer's markets, young people starting up CSA (community supported agriculture), and the increased eating of vegetables overall. Kale chips, cooking shows, the Edible magazines around the country, local restaurants buying from local farms, resurrection of the neighborhood butchershop, grassfed beef and the whole canning craze. That is were the large scale things are happening. Not by eating a live ant. I was missing in-depth descriptions of the origin and history of the things she ate - for example, has marijuana been eaten before in other cultures? Why do we feel such disgust for eating nose to tail, when and why did that change? People eat their named goats in Bangladesh, so what is it about our culture that makes us so resistant to eat anything we have known and petted? More analysis and less straight description would have been easier for the reader I think. The gory, sometimes disgusting and often interesting things written about in this book is more like an Anthony Bourdain show where things are meant to shock, entertain, and maybe, but probably not, inspire. Still, I am sure there are many readers that love this book. I was OK with it, but I don't really think the book is about food necessarily, the unifying factors here are illegal, disgusting, culture, and underground - and that is not what I associate with good, fantastic and memorable food. But good food was not the goal with this book, it was a book that was meant to shock. There are good shocks and bad shocks. This falls somewhere in the middle... The language is 5-stars, but the content and lack of broad context is dragging this book down to 3 stars.
    • 5/5
      I loved Anything That Moves almost as much as I hated the idea of eating some of the foods Goodyear described. This is a fascinating and educational book with a writing style that's as clean as the FDA wishes restaurants would be and as crisp as the preferred food texture of Americans. Goodyear took me on a wonderful journey where I could almost see the places and dishes she was describing. An excellent read for foodies and anyone who doesn't actually want to be a foodie, but still wants to live vicariously.
    • 4/5
      I found this book very interesting. It was intriguing to hear of all the underground illegal food that is being consumed in our country. It is a fascinating book for those who are interested in the 'foodie' culture and an eye opening book for those who aren't. The only criticism I have at all is that if you aren't completely familiar with 'food speak' some abbreviations and terms used are a mystery. Other than that I found it to be an interesting read.Thanks!
    • 4/5
      Engrossing, if often gross, book about pushing the culinary boundaries, especially when it comes to ingredients not often seen in typical Middle America. Goodyear integrates the background information pretty well with stories of the cooks, critics and foodies she interviews; I most enjoyed reading about the chefs, since the reviewers and foodies sometimes come off more as adventure-seekers rather than people just out to enjoy a nice meal. (Some of that material appeared previously in a slightly different form in The New Yorker, but it's woven in so neatly you wouldn't really know unless you'd already read those articles.) It's not Goodyear's fault but rather that of her subject that, being the conservative eater than I am, I ended the book feeling a little nauseated by all the talk of eating bugs, whale, and exotic but illegal plants and animals. (Actually, given the coda about her attemp to eat one extremely disgusting dish, maybe it *is* her fault -- I hope she doesn't include it in the final copy, since it ends the book on a truly sickening note.)
    • 4/5
      First, all the good things about this book, which basically explores the more extreme edges of the foodie culture. It's very well written, very well researched, and a wonderful collection of quirky personalities. If you like reading about food trends, quirky foods, the "under belly" of the food business, or funny people (think Andrew Zimmern), you will enjoy this book and I can recommend it. It also commendably does very little preaching - Goodyear presents the facts and people and lets you make the conclusion as to whether these extreme foods are our future or just a weird deviation.All that being said, personally I finished the book and felt rather depressed. With few exceptions, all of the foodies (a word I dislike, but definitely appropriate for this book) in this book seemed to be into food for a variety of reasons - health, craving to be extremist or out-of-the-ordinary, political statements against a variety of opponents, money, meeting challenges - but so few seemed to be in it for the sheer joy of cooking and eating delicious food. I just couldn't relate.
    • 5/5
      Anything that moves is about the extreme and challenging ingredients replacing some of our normal selections at the market. Author Dana Goodyear set out to explore the outer bounds of food culture and describes for the reader how chefs and others are breaking with conventional foods to reshape our palate. Brains, hearts, creme brulee made with bone marrow, raw milk, lion steaks are some of the food items discussed, along with the cultural differences in such selections. Explaining what a foodie is and how they eat and think made for some illuminating reading. Personally, I found the discussion about eating horse meat interesting, as I lived in the Netherlands for years and at least once a week had a delicious sandwich using horse meat, mayonnaise/mustard and lettuce.Behind the scenes, movement is happening in the foodie culture, and Ms Goodyear, a USC professor and New Yorker staff writer , will take you on an adventure that will leave you rethinking what you eat and more importantly, what you won't eat. I heartily recommend this entertaining book to every adult whom eats just to wake up an awareness of the choices available in the margins of the food culture of this decade.