Armchair Travel: 10 Books about Food and Travel

My favourite travel books with a foodie flavour to inspire some culinary adventures.

Are you feeling hungry? This edition of Armchair Travel is leaving the sofa and heading through to the kitchen*, inspired by books by cooks and other hungry travellers discovering and sharing food cultures from around the globe. So read on for a mouth-watering selection of food-themed travel books and cookbooks filled with stories.

*then returning to the sofa after rifling through the fridge for snacks.

Here are 10 of my favourite books inspired by food and travel.

A Cooks Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines – Anthony Bourdain

I read this book with envy while stationed in Antarctica, where my diet regularly featured Fray Bentos pies in tins and Smash powdered mashed potato. Bourdain poses the question, “What is the perfect meal?”, and sets out to explore what that means to people in different cultures around the globe. Travelling to places like Vietnam and Cambodia, Portugal and Morocco, his home in New York City, and the region of Western France where his father came from, Bourdain aims to eat like, and with, locals, searching out authentic dishes and local specialities. He doesn’t shy away from offerings which sound outlandish to the viewers of his Food Network show; lamb testicles in Morocco, Japanese nattō, Scottish haggis, the still-beating heart of a cobra in Vietnam, and relates the experiences in vivid, outrageous, and often hilarious anecdotes.

This book sets the groundwork for his fantastic TV shows The Layover and No Reservations, the latter being how I first discovered Bourdain. The way he connects with the people he meets on his travels through food, gaining insights into their culture and everyday lives, has always been inspirational. His way of communicating, self-deprecating, searingly honest, at times arrogant and self-righteous, but tempered by humility, sensitivity, and a great deal of introspection, are a masterclass on writing about travel, culture, and food. Find it here.

Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes through Darkness and Light – Caroline Eden

Eden’s book is a fascinating blend of elements; a cookbook of recipes from an overlooked part of the world, a vivid travelogue of her journey around the Black Sea, and a richly illustrated exploration of the art, architecture, history, and culture of the region. Recent events in Ukraine add a poignancy to many of the images, and a stark reminder that all travel writing is just a snapshot of a place captured at a specific moment in time.

She begins her travels in Odesa (Odessa), and moves through the historic region of Bessarabia to Romania and Bulgaria, on to Istanbul, the city where Europe and Asia come together, and through the Black Sea region of Turkey, via the Greek-influenced city of Trabzon, to the Georgian border, meeting people across a café table or market stall. In each stop she explores the interconnecting cultures of a region long in flux, tracing legacies of various ethnic groups, migrants and exiles, using food as the anchor to place the stories of the region. Buy it here.

Salt: A World History – Mark Kurlansky

Micro-histories like this, where a single, everyday item or idea becomes the lens through which we view vast scenes and epic stories from the past are one of my favourite genres, and this is one of the best and most surprising. Salt, the only rock we consume, has shaped the ebb and flow of civilisations through almost the entirety of human history. So valuable it served as currency, influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, financed conflicts and secured empires through taxation, and inspired revolutions and independence.

Kurlansky roams across the globe and through thousands of years of documented history following the path of salt, as an integral part of cooking and food preparation, as a lucrative product for trade, and as a key political commodity and catalyst for action. Buy it here.

Taste: My Life Through Food – Stanley Tucci

The sharp wit and wry humour of American actor Tucci was a bright light in lockdown as he shared a recipe for a perfect negroni cocktail on social media, and this memoir reflection on the role of food and eating in his life is filled with delicious anecdotes recounted with the same gentle charm, even flirtatiousness. Tucci’s vivid, conversational writing ranges from his childhood as a second-generation immigrant in a southern Italian community in New York State, falling in love on dinner dates, and compiling a cookbook with his wife to pass on their food heritage to their children, to his recent brush with oral cancer, acknowledging the absurdity of the illness given his passion for food. His acting career is not the focus of the book, though film roles are often the route to memorable meals, not least through his involvement in the food-centred films Big Night and Julie & Julia, and dining with big names like Marcello Mastroianni and Meryl Streep. Recipes are peppered throughout the book. Get it here.

My Life in France – Julia Child

Deployed to post-war France with her husband Paul to undertake work for the U.S. government, Child has barely a word of French and didn’t know the first thing about cooking. But she falls in love with French food culture, eating in bistros, shopping in local produce markets, and attending classes at Le Cordon Bleu, and her life is transformed. Child revels in the sense of taste, detailing memories of menus she ate or cooked for others from her first French meals to her culinary experiments to translate flavours for an American palate.

The book is beautifully written, constructed by Child’s nephew Alex Prud’homme from their many conversations and old letters which distil the essence of her love of French food, and illustrated with photographs taken by Paul, evocative of post-war France. The other highlight of the book is the relationship between Julia and Paul, the genuine love and mutual respect between the pair, and support and respect from Paul as she overcame the goofiness and imposter syndrome that shaped her younger years to forge a successful career as a renowned expert in French cuisine. Read this book with great care, as it may inspire you to order Child’s seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking and recreate some of the 500+ recipes gathered in that magnificent tome. Get it here.

Read more | 10 Books about Drinking-inspired Travel

Sharks Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China – Fuchsia Dunlop

Dunlop’s early experiences in Oxford, UK, where her mother taught English as a foreign language to students from across the globe who often cooked meals from their cultures to share, set her up for a future of gastronomic adventures, though as she notes in the book, nothing quite prepared her for her first visits to China and Hong Kong as a student. Following the same vein as Julia Child, she immerses herself in the cuisine of Sichuan over several years, eating with friends, in restaurants and at street stalls, shopping in produce markets, cooking meals, and becoming the first Westerner to enrol in the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine.

The book is filled with knowledgeable detail of cooking and eating across China, highlighting the vast differences which exist from one region to another in terms of available ingredients, preparation techniques, and finishing presentation, and are often overlooked in our understanding of Chinese cuisine. Outwith Sichuan, she meets and eats with different families, learning about the food heritage of their region and cultures. Get it here.

Learning another cuisine is like learning a language. In the beginning, you know nothing about its most basic rules of grammar. You experience it as a flood of words, or dishes, without system or structure.

Fuchsia Dunlop, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper

Following Fish: Travels around the Indian Coast – Samanth Subramanian

This collection of travel essays uses fish as a central theme to explore the coastal regions of India from West Bengal in the east, to Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the South, and Gujarat in the west. Journalist Subramanian investigates communities and cultures shaped by fish and fishing, delving into histories and traditions, sharing stories from research and conversations on his route.

Particular highlights are the chapters where he examines culinary aspects of fish, the processing and consuming of hilsa from a roadside shack in Kolkata, searching the toddy shops of southern Kerela for the perfect fiery preparation of karimeen, and the diversity of cultural cuisines available for workers in the markets of Mumbai. Get it here.

Nathaniel’s Nutmeg; or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History – Giles Milton

The tiny island of Run in the Indonesian archipelago doesn’t seem like the place where world history was shaped, but at the beginning of the seventeenth century it was at the centre of a bloody and prolonged conflict by the colonial powers of England, Portugal, and the Netherlands which determined their spheres of influence around the globe. The reason was spice, and control of spice was control of the universe. Pepper, cinnamon, mace, and nutmeg were worth a fortune in Europe, and Run’s harvest of nutmeg made it the most lucrative of the Spice Islands.

Milton covers the sweeping scale of trade and raids, conflict and colonisation, and the ripples of consequence that spread out across the globe from the East Indies to the Americas, through a focus on the misadventures of British spice prospectors in the Banda Islands, including the eponymous Nathaniel Courthorpe. He provides searing details of ocean voyages wracked with scurvy, and the vicious conflict with indigenous peoples that lie in the history of our common store cupboard ingredients. Buy it here.

The Spice Necklace: My Adventures in Caribbean Cooking, Eating, and Island Life – Anne Vanderhoof

Continuing the spice theme, Vanderhoof and her husband Steve tour the islands of the Caribbean on their sailboat, though sailing takes a secondary role to cooking and eating in this book. They meet fishermen and farmers, hunters and harvesters professional chefs and home cooks, and share their love of food as they voyage from island to island, from Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, St. Lucia, to the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Scattered throughout the book are seventy or so recipes for traditional Caribbean dishes shared by the people Vanderhoof meets and others inspired by the availability of fresh produce and island ingredients, many developed in the small galley onboard the boat. She writes with lightness and conviviality which make this book just as suitable for a holiday beach read as a companion in the kitchen.

We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time – José Andrés

Food writing can at times feel disconnected from reality, playing with the ideas of what is luxurious and exotic, but food is a fundamental human need, and never more than in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. Chef Andrés is the founder of World Central Kitchen (WSK), a non-profit NGO dedicated to preparing and distributing food in the immediate wake of natural disasters by building networks of local chefs and volunteer cooks, and sourcing local supplies. This book details the relief efforts coordinated by Andrés and WSK in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017, working closely with affected communities. He also gives an incisive critique of government bodies and disaster relief organisations working in Puerto Rico, his frustrations of working inside the established response structure, and potential solutions for dealing with future crises. Find it here.

What are your favourite cookbooks from around the world and food-inspired travel books? Leave your recommendations for me in the comments below.

If you’ve really enjoyed my Armchair Travel recommendations, you can buy me a virtual coffee here.

Did this post capture your imagination? Why not pin it for later?

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through my link, I will make a small commission* at no additional cost to you. These help me continue running this site, providing tips and advice, and sharing stories from my adventures. Thank you for supporting me.

*Maybe enough for a coffee, possibly a slice of cake too. Not enough for a yacht.