On the Noodle Road

On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta (2013) by Jen Lin-Liu. Where did noodles, or pasta, originate? Were noodles, as some believe, brought back to Italy from China by Marco Polo? Or did they first arise somewhere else, say, in Central Asia? These are some of the questions that Lin-Liu sets out to answer in her travels for this book. Starting in Beijing, where she had lived for about ten years, she travels across China, Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, Greece and Italy in search of the origins of the noodle. Parallel to this journey, she takes a personal journey with her husband Craig, who does not share her enthusiasm for exotic foods, but who tries to be a good sport about the trip. He meets her in various locales and makes part of the trip with her, and they have some disagreements, but basically things work out OK for them. Unfortunately, they don't work out so well for Lin-Liu's research into noodles: She is unable to establish who invented noodles, where they were invented, or anything else definitive about them. She does get to try a lot of scrumptious food in different parts of the world, and she furnishes recipes for those who are willing to go that far in trying to replicate her experiences. All in all, I found this to be a pretty good book, although I'm not enough of a foodie to have really gotten into it. Grade: B