Between Two Waters: Heritage, Landscape and the Modern Cook

Scottish chef Brunton debuts with a scattershot food manifesto inspired by her experience launching Inver, a restaurant on the shores of Scotland’s Loch Fyne. In 2015, Brunton and her partner bought a vacant cottage and turned it into a “modern Scottish” restaurant (dishes included “lamb-bone broth with mussels and turnip and seaweed”), winning rave reviews and awards, despite the initial doubts of old-timers who missed their fish and chips. Brunton celebrates Inver as a paragon of progressive food doctrine, serving traditional-ish dishes using organically grown ingredients from nearby farms, treating staff well, and forming close bonds with local farmers, fishermen, and cheesemakers. Brunton’s hymn to slow food and terroir leads to a meditation on “fusion cuisines,” then evolves into a critique of Western industrial agricultural practices that harm the environment and take advantage of farmers in developing nations. Brunton’s writing is best when she sticks to cooking (she describes the sound of a heating pan as “a frantic rattle, like panicked mice scrabbling at the sides of the pan, rising steeply to a seething hiss”). Her case against Big Food comes across more like sophomoric soapboxing, and her vision for a more equitable system of food production amounts to little more than vague truisms (“What if we understood that nothing is ever past at all, but rather living today is dependent on life having been lived before?”). There are some bright moments here, but they’re overwhelmed by stale dogma. (Jan.)