You know travel writing is in trouble when one of the books included in the New York Times Book Review's summer reading round-up is titled: Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, With Recipes. This book was followed by The Spice Necklace: My Adventures in Caribbean Cooking, Eating, and Island Life and Ginger and Ganesh: Adventures in Indian Cooking, Culture and Love.
The word "adventure" is now so overused in travel writing that it has become a cliche. (For years I've been telling students to avoid it.) And the culinary adventure seems like an inevitable development now that food shows dominate the Travel Channel. We no longer eat to travel, we travel to eat.
Granted, this is not new. A.J. Liebling wrote passionately about food. Between Meals is his belt-tightening chronicle of overeating in the City of Light. (His only love affair was with the things on his plate.) And M.F.K. Fisher blurred the line between food and travel. But they didn't call their experiences "adventures." Their forays in eating were integral to, and inseparable from, their study of the culture. They were not produced to feed a market niche.
