Seat this author at a table for one

There are some books that fall into the category of guilty pleasures: They may not offer the most edifying, illuminating or mind-expanding of reading experiences, but they are undemanding, agreeable and, well, fun. I must confess I was looking forward to indulging myself with “A Meal Observed,” Andrew Todhunter’s account of a dinner he and his wife had at Taillevent, a celebrated three-star French restaurant. How delightful, I imagined, to be vicariously transported to a culinary extravaganza at a superb Parisian restaurant.

But enjoyment of a meal, even a vicarious one, depends to some extent upon the company in which it’s eaten. And from the very first pages of this book, in which the author performs a coy little song and dance about how intimidated he feels at the prospect of actually setting foot in the aforementioned palace of gastronomy, it is apparent that the reader is in the company of an uncommonly fatuous, self-important bore:

“I glance again at my wife. Erin is thirty-two and beautiful -- stunning, really -- and for this I’m grateful. Her beauty is the one sure thing we have on this world we’re about to enter, the thing no waiter or sommelier or maitre d’hotel at Taillevent ... can wrest from us with a patronizing glance. In hours of need, one can remind oneself that beauty, more even than youth, its reckless twin, has ever been a fortune before which wealth, sophistication, and intellect will bow.”

Todhunter’s high anxiety turns out to have been misplaced. The maitre d’hotel greets them “with a half-bow, a sweeping gesture of the left arm, and a smile so warm and apparently sincere that we wonder if we’ve come to the right place. In sheer elasticity and expressive range, it is a face that Marcel Marceau could envy. From the mound in Yankee Stadium, this man’s smile would reach the upper decks.”

Marcel Marceau? Yankee Stadium? This is a writer so desperate to liven up his writing, he’ll try anything. A few pages later he recounts a restaurant accident he witnessed as a child involving a waiter who dropped a flaming dessert on a diner’s head: “The pudding burned in her hair like Sterno fuel, a cheerful flame, as she leapt from her seat. I believe I cheered.” It’s a common practice in writing classes to urge students to put in as many details as possible: The specifics are what lend vividness, they’re told. This book is proof positive that this approach doesn’t always work.

Indeed, what it calls to mind is that old expression, “Don’t bore with me the details.” The word that comes to mind is “filler.” It comes in three varieties: stale generalizations about food, eating and civilization; insufferably banal excursions into the author’s personal history; and just plain old tedious insignificant details.

For those whose stomachs are strong enough to persist, there are some modest rewards. Sandwiched in among the author’s pretentious philosophizing, flimsy attempts at cultural criticism and prolix, largely irrelevant, personal reminiscences is some interesting information about the meal, the restaurant and the people who work there. When Todhunter takes us behind the scenes into the kitchen and talks with the chefs, the book occasionally rises to the level of competent food writing. But to get to the (relatively) good parts, the reader must wade through a veritable swamp of bad writing and opinionated bumptiousness.

The trouble is that the author looms large in the foreground, and the self-portrait that emerges is not a pretty picture. Todhunter makes sure to let us know that, for all his obsession with fine points of etiquette, he is nonetheless a Real Man: He mentions his foray into high school wrestling, his participation in extreme sports.

This is, in fact, a deeply uncivilized book, gauche and graceless, that purports to pay tribute to civilization. If, as Todhunter pontificates on one page, the sharing of meals is a civilizing experience that forges links between host and guest, why then on another page is he so snotty about California waiters who present themselves as people rather than silent servitors?

Even a perfect little gem of a book on a subject this frivolous might have been vulnerable to the charge of preciosity or served as a convenient target for critics concerned about the decadence and materialism of contemporary society. All of these charges certainly apply to Todhunter’s book, but alas it’s not even a delectably “decadent” little souffle. One can only assume that publishers believe there is a bottomless market for books about food, no matter how bad. As Dr. Johnson said about a dish of meat he’d been served: “It is as bad as bad can be.”