When Stanley Tucci was a boy, he would often swap packed lunches with his friend, Ricky, at school. While Tucci’s lunch, assembled by his mother, would contain delicious leftovers from last night’s dinner, Ricky’s was always a sandwich filled with marshmallow – “the unhealthiest schmear between two slices of bread known to man”.
Nowadays, Tucci would rather eat gravel than ingest such rubbish. As we have learned from his cookbooks and from his Emmy-winning TV series where he wafts elegantly around Italy consuming his bodyweight in pasta and pizza, Tucci loves to eat. Taste, which is narrated by the actor, tells of a life lived through food, from the pomodoro sauce that would be strained through a pillowcase at his grandmother’s house, to his mother’s slow-cooked ragu, to the coq au vin he ate on an early date with his first wife, Kate. You will learn little here about his professional career, save for the Manhattan burger bars that sustained him during his early days as an actor, and the plate of andouillette, a particularly pungent French sausage, that he rashly ordered while dining with Meryl Streep (they sent it back and ordered omelette instead).
Tucci’s delivery is much as it is in his TV series: understated, urbane and charismatic. Not for nothing did an Instagram video of him making a negroni with exceptional chicness go viral during lockdown. Alas, there is no such video where he knocks up a perfect spaghetti carbonara, though listening to him rhapsodise about eating it in this mouth-watering memoir has to be the next best thing.
Taste is available via Penguin Audio, 6hr 49min.
Further listening
Killer in the Kremlin
John Sweeney, Penguin Audio, 9hr, 39min
The writer and journalist narrates his furious polemic about Vladimir Putin and his bloody reign over Russia.
Magpie
Elizabeth Day, 4th Estate, 11hr, 34min
This taut psychological thriller about a couple, their lodger and one woman’s longing for a baby is read by Tanya Reynolds.
