Love Is My Favorite Flavor

 Book 5 of my 2025 Reading Challenge

read from January 6 - 10

Love Is My Favorite Flavor: A Midwestern Dining Critic Tell All 

by Wini Moranville

published 2024

Summary (via the book jacket)

In a remarkable career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Wini Moranville has witnessed the American restaurant landscape transform from the inside out. At just shy of fourteen, she began a ten-year stretch working in a kaleidoscope of quintessential midwestern eateries of the time. Moranvilles hands-on experiences weave a vivid tapestry of the American restaurant landscape in the 1970s and 1980s. In the mid-1990s, the tables turned as Moranville became a prolific food and wine writer for national publications, as well as the dining critic for the Des Moines Register and dsm Magazine. 

Love Is My Favorite Flavor underscores the timelessness of what it is we seek when we entrust restaurateurs with our hard-earned money and our hard-won leisure time.

My Opinion

3 stars

I picked this up from a display at the library.  I was a Register subscriber (reading an actual paper newspaper daily that was delivered to my doorstep!) during the time Moranville was their food critic so I have that familiarity besides the nostalgia of also visiting a few of these eateries during my childhood.

Taking notes as I read shows my decline of enjoyment as I read this book.  In the beginning I noted how thoughtful she is about negative reviews and how I appreciated her recognition of Iowa diners (as in the people eating, not the style of restaurant) and what they are typically looking for in an experience.  Then about midway through the note became yikes as she wrote about portion sizes, obesity, and how people visiting would comment on how unpleasant (she even used the word "noxious") the meal sizes were.  Then the note was oh no it really went downhill as she talked about returning from France each summer struggling to get back into the Iowa cuisine of "a bucket of lettuce followed by the usual plates of undistinguished overabundance" and how she had to write seemingly positive reviews because of what people wanted here "even if [she] thought they deserved better".

So why 3 stars?  Because the writing is fine and my personal reaction to her opinions doesn't negate the enjoyment I had at the beginning of the book.  I'm not talking about negative reviews she's written, I'm talking about the seemingly negative feelings she had about her community.

Talk about biting the hand that literally fed her.  It left a bad taste in my mouth.  All puns intended.