On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome, with Love and Pasta by Jen Lin-Liu

Noodles, stews, pilafs and pizzas, oh my! Jen Lin-Liu’s newest book is not the book for you if you’ve just started a new diet or are hungry in the least- it’s like shopping on an empty stomach. From China to Italy, she covers follows the Silk Road in a quest to find where noodles originated, but along the way also discovers ties that bind women together across geographic boundaries and just how central food is the any given region’s history and culture.

When I first picked up this book, as a non-foodie (I’m about as far from it as one can get, as I would gladly subsist on cold cereal for the rest of my life), I was worried that the focus on meals would not hold my interest for an entire book, but as it turns out, that wasn’t a problem at all! While the food is the core of the book, with each chapter including several well-laid out recipes, the tale weaves a story of travel, a first year of marriage and thoughts about what it means to be a woman in our 21^st century world.

I was particularly fascinated with Lin-Liu’s time in Iran, as it is a place we hear so much about in the news, but almost always it is portrayed in a negative light. To hear the stories of women creating lives there and providing for families there was a fascinating look into a world that is normally off-limits to westerners.  This same ideas rings true throughout the book, as the author has the opportunity to weave her way into the lives of the women she visits, giving her a much more intimate look at each culture than a traveler would get if they were just passing through the country on a tour or visiting the highlighted sites of the land. I think it is that intimacy of the stories, both her own and that of her subjects that makes this book most appealing.

On Noodle Road is an eclectic mix of travelogue, food writing and memoir, crossing genre-created boundaries in a way that draws in loyal readers from each category. While I am partial to the travel/memoir sections of the story, Jen Lin-Liu bring something to the proverbial table that nearly everyone would enjoy. (Okay, if she brought dumplings to literal table, we might all be even more thrilled.)Because I appreciated the genre-bending nature of the book and really loved traveling the Silk Road with Lin-Liu, On Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome, with Love and Pasta earns a solid: