One More Croissant for the Road by Felicity Cloake documents her gastronomic travels cycling 2,300 kilometres around France and sampling all the regional culinary delights the country has to offer. I enjoyed Red Sauce Brown Sauce which saw Cloake travelling around the UK in search of breakfast food, although that particular tour was frequently scuppered by Covid-19 restrictions, so it was nice to read a pre-pandemic travelogue this time. Cloake writes delicious descriptions of the food she consumes, but there are plenty of stressful moments too, including train strikes, punctures, torrential rain and erratic opening hours. The Pause Café sections about the history of French food were very interesting and Cloake is an enthusiastic Francophile who pokes gentle fun at French idiosyncrasies while developing a system for ranking croissants with the seriousness that the task deserves. I am looking forward to reading Cloake’s new book Peach Street to Lobster Lane about American cuisine.
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Red Sauce Brown Sauce by Felicity Cloake is a travel memoir which documents the Guardian food writer’s “British breakfast odyssey” cycling around the UK in search of all the components of breakfast food from sausages in Glamorgan to potato bread in Northern Ireland to jam in Tiptree. Hampered by persistent hamstring injuries and COVID-19 restrictions which were still in place in the summer of 2021 when Cloake embarked on the trip, it’s a shame that some of her plans had to be abandoned, but a publisher’s deadline is clearly something that can’t be pushed back. As well as the usual everyday suspects such as eggs, bacon and Weetabix, I learned a lot about more esoteric regional delicacies such as laverbread, stotties, soda farls and pikelets. At the end of each chapter, Cloake poses the “red sauce or brown sauce” question to everyone she meets along the way on her journey… for me, it will always be ketchup. I will certainly seek out Cloake’s book ‘One More Croissant for the Road’ about her culinary travels in France. Continue reading
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