Wanderlust: Extraordinary People, Quirky Places, and Curious Cuisine

Karen Gershowitz. She Writes, $17.95 trade paper (328p) ISBN 978-1-647-42557-9

Travel writer Gershowitz (Travel Mania) shares in this ho-hum essay collection her lifelong fascination with international cuisine and cultures. Growing up in 1950s and ’60s New York City, the author caught the travel bug from her mother, who brought her to museums, “international performances,” and holein-the-wall restaurants to sample knishes, empanadas, and sushi at a time when “eating raw fish was considered instant death—or, at a minimum, the source of severe stomach problems.” These outings inspired an “insatiable need for new experiences” that took the adult Gershowitz around the globe, suffering through a carb-heavy diet in 1970s London, sampling apple strudel in 1994 Vienna, and learning to cook bulgogi in 2012 Seoul, among other excursions. Unfortunately, Gershowitz’s recollections are rendered in rote prose (“Despite the horrible directions from the tourist office, we located the bus stop. The two-hour drive took us through small towns and winding hills in various stages of new foliage”), and her insights about food’s ability to bridge cultural divides can feel overly pat (when the author tried strudel in Vienna at the suggestion of a local, she realized that— despite her childhood hatred of the pastry and misgivings about the city’s Nazi past—“Clearly I’d been wrong about the strudel. No doubt I’d also been wrong about the people”). Despite her best intentions, Gershowitz doesn’t quite deliver on her uplifting message that

“the world is filled with extraordinary people, quirky places, and curious cuisine.” (Oct.)