THE YEAR OF EATING DANGEROUSLY
By Tom Parker Bowles
Ebury Press
Paperback
372 pages
$21.75 (without GST)
Major bookstores
****

PUTTING his mouth where his journalism is, British food writer Tom Parker Bowles ate his way across the world, sampling the most gut-churning victuals he could find and living to tell the tale.

Of course, he heads to the usual suspects like China (for smelly tofu, sea slug, millipedes, locusts and cockroaches), Laos (for tripe and wood stew) and Tokyo (for fugu, or the extremely poisonous puffer fish).

But he also noses around Elvers in England (a traditional eel-producing powerhouse) and Nashville (barbecue).

The adventure and comedy that such a travelogue can offer are obvious, and the writer milks it for all it is worth. With droll self-deprecating humour, he examines, and attempts to overcome, his natural and nurtured aversions to certain foods, noting that much of it is tied to cultural norms.

Thus, in South Korea, the born-and- bred dog lover - his Mum is the dog-rearing Camilla, after all - even attempts the mother of all forbidden foods, dog. But he is ultimately felled by its smell of wet pooch: 'I feel the ghost of this poor mutt by my feet, not waiting for scraps but staring up with baleful eyes.'

Morbid curiosity aside, he also offers a fascinating look at the history and traditions behind what we eat, from the endangered lives of shellfish gatherers in southern Spain to the corporatisation of the chilli industry in New Mexico.

Though his conversational writing style can occasionally feel a little draggy, his obvious passion for food and determination to understand the people who eat it make this book an absorbing and tasty romp around the globe.

If you like this, read: Garlic And Sapphires by Ruth Reichl (2005, $23.54 with GST, Books Kinokuniya)

In the hilarious memoirs of her years as The New York Times' restaurant critic, Reichl reveals that eating for a living is not always a picnic.