Library Journal
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This companion to Franey's new PBS series is an engaging exploration of American cooking today. The authors and their crew toured the country, stopping at such diverse locales as a cherry orchard in Washington State, a family-run restaurant in San Juan, and a cattle ranch in northern Nevada, where Franey cooked steaks with Bernaise sauce for the cowboys. Each segment of the show focused on a different food category, but the people involved in producing or cooking that food are a key part of the narrative as well. The recipes--many more than are demonstrated on the series--are an eclectic mixture, from Franey's unique French/American creations to traditional home cooking to sophisticated restaurant fare. An essential purchase. BOMC HomeStyle Books main selection; BOMC alternate; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/91. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Perhaps the best-loved chef in America (though perhaps not the best recognized, because of limited television exposure) is a plumpish and jolly, short, silver-haired man who still speaks with a soup{{‡}}con of a French accent. Franey, ex-food editor of the New York Times, has now turned his talent to celebrate the best of American cooking in a companion book to an upcoming PBS series. Much like his preceding 11 tomes, this one is filled with the delight of food discoveries and the joy of new friendships on treks ranging between San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Ketchikan, Alaska. Each of his 23 journeys centers on a visit to a farm, a restaurant, or a hatchery to find "grown in the U.S.A." ingredients. The northern California farm of the Beekmans, for example, demonstrates to him the tastes of various honeys, while cherry pickers in Yakima, Washington, explain why this fruit is named "the riskiest crop of all." Throughout, sidebars instruct even old-hand chefs in the realities of such factors as price wars for turkeys at Thanksgiving, while over 200 recipes retain Franey's hallmarks: simplicity and elegance. (Reviewed Mar. 15, 1992)0679404929Barbara Jacobs

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

French-born-and-trained Franey (Cuisine Rapide, 1989, etc.) hops on the eat-American bandwagon for this book and an accompanying PBS-TV series--but his and coauthor Flaste's take on American cooking is purely their own. They begin by roughing it in beef country with Franey feeding the cowboys steak--with béarnaise sauce and wine. After a jaunt in Puerto Rico that yields some typical island dishes, the authors are soon cooking up an individual salmon lasagna adapted from one prepared at Disney World. West Indian food on St. Thomas; nine different potato recipes (one of them potato crab-cakes with crème fraîche) that they set at Seattle's Pike Place market; and more salmon, some with champagne sauce, that Franey and Flaste work into an Alaskan location--these are just a few of the dishes cooked up for this interesting, unpredictable TV/book project.

Publishers Weekly
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Here Franey and Flaste (coauthors of Pierre Franey's Low-Calorie Gourmet ), following the example of many past great chefs, explore America with the goal of documenting our foodways. Yet they set their own course through the country, relying on farmers themselves for information on how foodstuffs are raised or harvested regionally. By speaking with the people who actually produce the foods, they also uncover great stories. The companion to the new PBS television series of the same title, the book contains much visual appeal; the authors' ears for dialogue and eyes for color are especially evident in their recipe prefaces. They recall being mesmerized in Crisfield, Md., by a molting crab: ``When a crab frees itself from its shell, there is some similarity to a chick doing it, but this is more startling. The crab does it backwards, as if it had gotten itself cornered and now had to punch its way out.'' The authors' enthusiasm for food makes the book a satisfying read and a good reference. Chapters are devoted to a single foodstuff or to foods from a single region. From such easy classics as sauteed potatoes with garlic170 to more complex and original dishes--the Silver Thatch Inn's roulade of turkey breast and corn, spiced with ancho chilies252 --Franey and Flaste deliver au courant cuisine. HomeStyle main selection; BOMC alternate. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved