Food for Thought

FOOD: True Stories of Life on the Road edited by Richard Sterling (Travelers’ Tales, $17.95, paperback).

There is almost never enough to eat in travel stories. Our writers are in a hurry to see the sights. They are worried about getting sick or fat. They are dry-toast writers.

Well, here are exceptions, one after another, feasts for the hungry: a vast, buttery range of writing wrapped around our stomachs, our hearts and our sense of place. And with a nice glass of wine here and there.

Before long, I suspect, we’ll be feeling overwhelmed by these thick, dense anthologies that are flying off the presses of Travelers’ Tales publishers in San Francisco. By the time you digest this volume, several more varied titles in the series will have arrived on the shelves.

But “Food” will be hard to surpass and should not be overlooked in the competition at the bookstore.

Here are classic stories, tight and evocative. Like M.F.K. Fisher, the grandest of our food writers, sketching life on the restaurant car aboard the 10 a.m. train to Milan as World War II approaches ominously. Or Teddy White’s illuminating vignette on China, as told over a dinner of duck that was really a pig. And Edmund Wilson strolling Paris and shopping for groceries with his dog Fred.

These are tales in which our appreciation of culture arrives on a plate or wrapped in butcher paper.

Eating on the road is about the pace of our travels. So forget smelling the roses. How about stopping for a good lunch?

Here are great banquets, like Colin Thubron’s all-nighter in Turkmenistan. And the not-so-great banquets, as when Lars Eighner lives from a garbage dumpster and raises the question, “Why was this discarded?” And there is P.J. O’Rourke, naturally, on famine: “All guns, no butter,” his profile of Somalia.

Kelly Simon writes of fizzled romance and sliced swordfish on the Mediterranean. Robert Daily holds his breath and opens an 1806 Chateau Lafite. And Pamela Michael recalls the Mexican tropics by her first smell of it: “a blast furnace fueled by jasmine, corn husks, bacon grease, and Clorox bottles.”

Together, there are more than 50 selections in this volume, night stand reading of the first order.

CALIFORNIA COASTAL ACCESS GUIDE (California Coastal Commission, $17.95, photographs, maps).

CALIFORNIA WILDLIFE VIEWING GUIDE by Jeannie L. Clark (Falcon, $12.95, photographs, maps).

When smug friends in Seattle are flaunting their environmentalist sensibilities, flaunt this “Coastal Access Guide.” Californians voted to open the coast here to public use, unlike Washington state, where much of the seashore is private.

This revised, readable and detailed guide to beaches, access routes, parks, campgrounds, fishing spots and wetlands is a government publication of which we can all be proud . . . and a treasure for wanderers.

I cannot be so kind to the “Wildlife Viewing Guide.” It’s a nice enough glimpse at some of the many places where you’re apt to come in contact with California’s diverse wild animals. But I found it out of balance. There are six references to the desert pupfish but not a mention of my two favorite wild neighbors, the coyote and the skunk.

ACCESS SAN FRANCISCO by Richard Saul Wurman (HarperPerennial, $18.50, paperback, maps, drawings).

JERRY GRAHAM’S SAN FRANCISCO: Backroads and Back Streets by Jerry & Catherine Graham (HarperPerennial, $15, paperback).

From a growing accumulation of new guidebooks about San Francisco, here are two that will get you through a week or a weekend.

Wurman’s “Access” guide covers the mainstream, and is quick, readable and thorough. Even if you feel you know the city, this is a good reminder of places you may not have enjoyed for a while.

Graham’s complementary guide is misnamed to keep it part of his family of back-road guides of the Bay Area. City Lights Bookstore, for instance, is hardly on anyone’s back road. Instead, think of it as an insider’s guide. Graham’s tastes are on the mainstream side of hip, but he suggests the neighborhoods, parks, getaways and shops from the vantage of someone who lives there.

Quick Trips

KINGDOM OF THE FILM STARS: Journey into Jordan by Annie Caulfield (Lonely Planet, $10.95, paperback). The popular guidebook publisher Lonely Planet also has branched into travel literature. This is a jewel about love in the empty place between cultures, with an improbable title and story. British television writer Caulfield by chance meets a Bedouin tour guide in Jordan. They go out twice and part. They correspond. Later she follows her heart back to the Arab world. Caulfield is a sly, deadpan writer with hair-trigger timing and a graceful appreciation of how cultures overlap, and sometimes don’t. This could easily be a maudlin book. But it is not. It is gentle and wise, private and revealing at the same time, and all the more moving for it.

BEST TRAVEL DEALS 1997 by Ed Perkins (Consumer Reports, $8.99, paperback). What is the rate of return on frequent flyer miles? And who has the best program? Which airline has two inches more coach legroom on a 767, Air France or British Airways? What’s the cheapest car rental agency in Israel? What are the options, really, for a rail pass in Europe? And about those senior discounts--50% off of what? Invest the time here and save the money there. Or at least dispel that uneasy feeling that you are a stooge in the great travel scam.

Books to Go appears the second and fourth week of every month.