Three-Word Summary: Jokes about food

Rating: 4/5

As a stand-up comedian, Jim Gaffigan is reknown for his ability to serve up seemingly endless punchlines about a specific subject. Generally that subject happens to be food.

Food: A Love Story is essentially a compilation of all of Gaffigan’s food-related humor bound into book form. This means those familiar with his stand-up routines will see lots of familiar jokes.

While this does remove the crucial element of surprise, it still demonstrates how well Gaffigan’s pontifications about food translate across different mediums.

In the book, he runs the entire food gambit — from discussing food in different regions of the country (referring to New England as Seabugland) to carefully dissecting all of the different food groups (of which, steak is by far the manliest).

The text is filled with plenty of personal anecdotes featuring Jim and his family, complete with photos of them eating various food stuffs. Gaffigan’s ability to relate to an audience with self-deprecation and self-loathing is one of his strengths as a comic.

I actually received a signed copy of the book when I went to go see Gaffigan live as part of his book tour. He told a great deal of the food jokes on stage, including his famous ‘hot pockets’ routine.

Not surprisingly, the jokes are funnier in person. It’s difficult to get the right comedic timing down on paper. But I did find that the book became funnier when I imagined it being read in Gaffigan’s voice in my head.

All that to say, Food: A Love Story is a funny book by a funny man. There are parts where the pace lags slightly, but they are balanced by sections where Gaffigan hits on a number of gaffs with full force.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go eat a sandwich.