Life – December 3, 2004
“Pat Conroy’s recipes make me want to set the table for 10, turn up Hank Williams singing ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,’ roast a passel of oysters, then whip up a pound cake with peaches and cream. Conroy, who wrote The Prince of Tides, knows that cooking good food is the key to cherishing family, neighbors, even new friends met on an airplane. Since I have the food of the South encoded in my DNA, and given that I cooked in both Provence and Italy, I’m thrilled Conroy’s book covers these exact three territories.”
-- Frances Mayes

Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) – August 30, 2004
“A joy on several levels. Conroy might not be the first to disguise a memoir as a collection of foodstuffs, but it's hard to imagine a more entertaining, honest and outlandish effort. In 21 chapters and 100 recipes, he traces his masticating, lusting, family-crazed, traveling life… The book aches with tales of times when eating is at its most urgent: in the face of love, or death, after an all-nighter with the guys or in the company of other great eaters. It's hard not to admire Conroy's innate ability to spin a yarn.”