Invitation to a Banquet

The Story of Chinese Food

By: Fuchsia Dunlop

Narrated by: Fuchsia Dunlop

Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

The epic tale of the world's most sophisticated gastronomic culture, brilliantly told through thirty dishes at a Chinese banquet

Chinese was the first truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese labourers began to sojourn and settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world's best-loved food cultures and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking has ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of the richness or sophistication of China's local food traditions - but today that is beginning to change.

In Invitation to a Banquet, award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop explores the culture, history and philosophy informing real Chinese cookery. Taking the form of a banquet menu, each chapter embarks on a deep dive into a particular dish that expresses a singular aspect of Chinese gastronomy, before finishing with a recipe. Starting with sweet-and-sour pork, that classic of British Chinese takeaway cooking, Dunlop examines the ways in which Chinese food has been understood and misunderstood in the West since its earliest days as an immigrant cuisine. Then the real feast begins: a journey into Chinese food as it is made, cooked, eaten and considered in China itself, through a diverse series of dishes including Mapo Tofu, Dongbo Pork, Knife-scraped Noodles and Pomelo Pith with Shrimp Eggs.

Weaving together history, mouthwatering descriptions of food and on-the-ground research conducted over the course of twenty-five years, Invitation to a Banquet is a lively tribute to the pleasures and mysteries of Chinese cuisine.

© 2023 Fuchsia Dunlop (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

A brilliant, passionate and spellbinding tour de force (Claudia Roden)

Fuchsia Dunlop is one of the world's best writers on Chinese food. This book is ample proof of that. Each chapter becomes a course, written in her usual erudite manner but entertaining and informative at the same time. I found the book irresistible, addicting and mouth-watering. If you love Chinese food then you must accept the invitation to her banquet! (Ken Hom CBE, author of CHINESE COOKERY)

As a young Chinese food writer, Fuchsia Dunlop's books were my Harry Potter. She introduced me to the vibrant, expansive, magical world of Chinese gastronomy beyond the four walls of my Cantonese home. Next to my parents, there's no person I've learned more about the cooking of my people than Fuchsia Dunlop. Invitation to a Banquet just might be her magnum opus: the richest English-language accounting of China's culinary history I've ever read. I'm grateful this magnificent book exists (Kevin Pang, author of A VERY CHINESE COOKBOOK)