«Contrariamente a las críticas que se le han hecho, y que pudieran hacérsele, la revolución culinaria futurista presentada en este volumen se propone el grande, noble y útil designio de modificar radicalmente la alimentación de nuestra raza, fortificándola, dinamizándola y espiritualizándola con la ayuda de alimentos absolutamente nuevos en los que la experiencia, la inteligencia y la imaginación forman un sustituto económico a la trivialidad, la repetición y el gasto. Nuestra cocina futurista, regulada para las grandes velocidades como el motor de un hidroavión, parecerá loca y peligrosa a los ojos de un paseante melindroso, cuando en realidad tiende a crear una armonía entre el palacio de los hombres y su vida de hoy y de mañana. Con algunas célebres y legendarias excepciones, los hombres se han alimentado hasta el presente como las hormigas, las ratas, los gatos y los bueyes. Con nosotros, los futuristas, nace la primera cocina auténticamente humana, el arte de cocinar que, como todo arte, excluye el plagio y exige la originalidad creadora. Publicamos esta obra no por azar durante una crisis económica mundial cuyo desarrollo futuro puede parecer incierto pero que con seguridad nos supondrá la depresión y el pánico. A este pánico nosotros oponemos una cocina futurista, es decir: el optimismo a la mesa.»

An irresistible sampling of the city's rich food heritage, Gastropolis explores the personal and historical relationship between New Yorkers and food. Beginning with the origins of New York's fusion cuisine, such as Mt. Olympus bagels and Puerto Rican lasagna, the book describes the nature of food and drink before the arrival of Europeans in 1624 and offers a history of early farming practices. Specially written essays trace the function of place and memory in Asian cuisine, the rise of Jewish food icons, the evolution of food enterprises in Harlem, the relationship between restaurant dining and identity, and the role of peddlers and markets in guiding the ingredients of our meals. They share spice-scented recollections of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and colorful vignettes of the avant-garde chefs, entrepreneurs, and patrons who continue to influence the way New Yorkers eat.

Both madcap cookbook and manifesto on Futurism, Marinetti's exuberant and entertaining book has been described as one of 'the best artistic jokes of the century'No other cultural force except the early twentieth-century avant-garde movement Futurism has produced a provocative work about art disguised as an easy-to-read cookbook. Part manifesto, part artistic joke, Fillippo Marinetti's The Futurist Cookbook is a collection of recipes, experiments, declamations and allegorical tales. Here are recipes for ice cream on the moon; candied atmospheric electricities; nocturnal love feasts; sculpted meats. Marinetti also sets out his argument for abolishing pasta as ill-suited to modernity, and advocates a style of cuisine that will increase creativity. Although at times betraying its author's nationalistic sympathies, The Futurist Cookbook is funny, provocative, whimsical, disdainful of sluggish traditions and delighted by the velocity and promise of modernity.

Prologue: a rendez-vous -- The cook -- Writer and author -- Origin and early development of modern cookbooks -- Printed cookbooks: diffusion, translation, and plagiarism -- Organizing the cookbook -- Naming the recipes -- Pedagogical and didactic aspects -- Paratexts in cookbooks -- The recipe form -- The cookbook genre -- Cookbooks for rich and poor -- Health and medicine in cookbooks -- Recipes for fat and lean days -- Vegetarian cookbooks -- Jewish cookbooks -- Cookbooks and aspects of nationalism -- Decoration, illusion, and entertainment -- Taste and pleasure -- Gender in cookbooks and household books -- Epilogue: cookbooks and the future.