Book Review

Book Review

Chef's Tales
By Michael Saxon
Hibiscus Books, 2000
288 pp
US$9.99

JAKARTA (JP): Saxon has cooked up a storm at restaurants
around the world and lived to tell the tales. He has diced with
death on the mean streets of Houston in the United States, been
caught in the middle of a passionate love triangle in the Bahamas
and battled acute boredom in a secluded resort on an unnamed
Indonesian island "45 minutes from Singapore".

The Englishman tells of these and many unusual experiences in
a humorous, self-effacing and entertaining style. It's his very
ability to laugh at himself -- poking fun at his own insecurities
and failings -- which is most appealing. Although there is the
usual round of stranger-in-a-foreign-land first experiences
(squat toilets, etc.), Saxon is a skilled and perceptive observer
of others, composing beautiful characterizations of people he has
met through his travels.

The chapter on Indonesia is brief, telling of how everything
was not as it was promised by the resort administrators. But
Saxon's recounting of the elaborate preparations for the
impending visit of the exalted president Soeharto -- including
the arrival of a poker-faced presidential food taster -- will be
hilarious to anyone who has dealt with local officialdom at its
most baffling. (brc)