Food in Fiction: 5 Literary Works that Make Us Drool

Hemingway knew many things, chief among them: how to construct impossibly long, yet grammatically correct sentences; how to create stoic but relatable male characters; and how to write about food and drinks. Like Islands in the Stream’s protagonist, Thomas, a famous painter marred by death and pangs of loneliness, Hemingway also lived a portion of his troubled life in Cuba and spent much of this time at Havana’s El Floridita. Hemingway’s loving descriptions of Floridita’s signature drink propelled the small dive bar’s popularity. It remains to this day a landmark frequented by Hemingway fans and rum-drinkers alike. 

 

It had started at noon at the Floridita … [Thomas] had drunk double frozen daiquiris, the great ones that Constante made, that had no taste of alcohol and felt, as you drank them, the way downhill glacier skiing feels running through powder snow and, after the sixth and eighth, felt like downhill glacier skiing feels when you’re running unroped. – Hemingway

 

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Bless me, Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya

In this classic and controversial coming-of-age novel from Rudolfo Anaya, Tony, the young protagonist, struggles to grasp the practices of organized religion, the arbitrary nature of death, and to find his beliefs among the opposing values of his family. On his life journey, Tony meets Ultima, a simultaneously respected and feared curandera, who teaches him about the medicinal and mystical properties of oregano, chamomile, yerba del manso, osha, and other flowers and herbs of New Mexico. In so doing, Ultima helps Tony form an understanding of chicano culture and his place within it. And you thought chamomile was just for tea.

 

And I was happy with Ultima. We walked together in the llano and along the river banks to gather herbs and roots for her medicines. She taught me the names of plants and flowers, of trees and bushes, of birds and animals; but most important, I learned from her that there was a beauty in the time of day and in the time of night, and that there was peace in the river and in the hills. She taught me to listen to the mystery of the groaning earth and to feel complete in the fulfillment of its time. My soul grew under her careful guidance. – Anaya

 

Click on for more of our favorite examples of food in Latin fiction…

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Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos (Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands), Jorge Amado

Comedy, sex, and Brazilian food, all in one book. Amado’s novel tells the story of Dona Flor, a widow who remarries a boring and sexually unsatisfying man only to have the ghost of her lustful first husband present himself to her. Dona Flor grapples with the debt she inherits from her first husband and other challenges by running a culinary school and using the principles in her delicious recipes to guide her actions. Foodies will really appreciate the lengths to which Amado goes to describe Flor’s dishes and tips for entertaining. Fair warning: do not read this novel on an empty stomach as drool might smudge the ink. 

 

Exu eats anything in the way of food, but he drinks only one thing: straight rum. At the crossroads Exu waits sitting upon the night to take the most difficult road, the narrowest, the most winding, the bad road, it is generally held, for all Exu wants is to frolic, to make mischief. Exu, the great mischief-maker, Vadinho’s patron deity. – Amado

Como Agua Para Chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate), Laura Esquivel

This is probably the first novel that comes to mind when you think of food in Latin American literature. In the main character, Tita, a woman bound by tradition to a life of self-sacrifice, Esquivel combines two of the most fundamental ties of humanity: food and frustration. Esquivel uses this link to ensnare readers as they identify with the protagonist’s struggle to balance propriety with longing and passion. Tita’s only outlet is her cooking; her mouth-watering recipes peppered throughout the novel are so strongly infused with her stifled emotions that they have supernatural side effects. Or do rose petal sauces often make you sweat pink liquid and accidentally make showers combust, forcing you to run off naked into the night with men on horseback?

 

One last chile in walnut sauce left on the platter after a fancy dinner couldn’t feel any worse than she did…When nobody eats the last chile on the plate, it’s usually because none of them wants to look like a glutton…It was as if they were rejecting that stuffed pepper, which contains every imaginable flavor; sweet as candied citron, juicy as pomegranate, with the bit of pepper and the subtlety of walnuts… Within it lies the secret of love, but it will never be penetrated, and all because it wouldn’t feel proper. – Esquivel

 

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All the Odes, Pablo Neruda

 

Though Neruda’s love poems are more commonly referenced, the prolific writer’s talents immortalized the importance of other less conventionally poetic objects as well. Case in point: Odas Elementales. This work contains poems dedicated to commonplace ingredients like bread, onions, tomatoes, and even boxes of tea. By zooming in on unassuming foods, Neruda forces his readers to see the rich metaphorical nature of basic ingredients in the Latin American diet that we so often take for granted. In “Ode to the Artichoke”, for example, Neruda cleverly paints a common artichoke as a proud, intimidating soldier. While at the market, the soldier, standing rigidly at attention and armored with scales in an attempt to guard its secretly tender center, is approached by a woman. Unafraid of his exterior, she takes him home and disarms him, therefore finally exposing the green heart of the previously defensive hired gun. You’ll never look at an artichoke heart the same way again. 

 

 

Thus ends / In peace / This career / Of the armed vegetable / Which is called an artichoke,/ Then / Scale by scale, / We strip off / The delicacy / And eat / The peaceful mush / Of its green heart. – Neruda