Review by Ian Keogh

Once confronted with To Drink and To Eat it seems remarkably strange that no-one’s considered presenting recipes as comic strips before. It’s such an obviously efficient use of the form. However, Guillaume Long supplies far more than recipes. He reflects on food and drink generally, quite often fetishising, and discusses restaurants and other places visited, in material originally produced for French newspaper Le Monde. Arranging the chapters via seasons of the year and an indication of the delights awaiting is provided by the self-deprecating classification of the contents (sample art left).

At the end of the day Long points out how our cheap eating habits deny the true pleasure of food. Four pages at the start are devoted to coffee and they’ll divide the time wasters given To Eat and To Drink for Christmas from the real enthusiasts. Will you take Long’s advice on board or will you just head back to the granules and the boiling water?

He’s evangelical, but in a contagious way. Yes, he’s hectoring, but accompanied by such charm and so many smart observations accumulated from experience, and he’s willing to admit erroneous pretentious judgements. The garlic mill he was given as a gift stayed unused for ages, yet has become an essential kitchen tool. Despite fine sensibilities, Long is a practical man, and there’s plenty of thought applied to pages such as that illustrating the 24 items every cook needs for preparing a variety of food, or a reply to a reader’s letter asking about ideal cupboard ingredients.

Just when you’ve come to terms with how expansive and knowledgeable Long is, there’s an eighteen page trip to Budapest. While the magic doesn’t entirely disappear, the travelogue is little more than a sketched list of delights and dislikes, lacking the presence of the earlier material, and indeed what follows. A later trip to Venice produced in the same manner is of greater value for being more than a travelogue, shorter and including some recipes.

There’s a suspicion that some jokes just don’t translate well, particularly Mathis Matin’s half dozen short strips about confusing one phrase with another, but Long at his best, such as three pages on crepes, will make you reconsider food and how you prepare it, and he’ll make you want to try it. A proviso, though, is that what seems easily available in French groceries might not be so simply located in American or British equivalents. On the other hand, try getting celery salt in France.

Anyone taken with Long’s immersion in indulgence will be delighted to know Oni Press have translated two further editions, with Volume 2 naturally following.