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Food Critic Frank Bruni Talks "Born Round"
Frank Bruni, in New York, earlier this month. (AP)

(AP Photo)

“Born round, you don’t die square” — as food critic Frank Bruni’s grandma used to say.

She was talking about how central food is to a satisfying and successful life.

That theme is a big part of the former New York Times restaurant critic’s new memoir, “Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater.”

The young Frank Bruni loved Grandma Bruni’s little pastas, which each carried the shape of her thumb. Yet the love of food, he found, was a mixed blessing.

Bruni became, as he puts it, a “baby bulimic.” And by the time he was in college, eating disorders were taking over his life.

Bruni says his relationship with food has defined him. He’s fought with food, even wrestled with it in his dreams, and now brokered a delicate truce.

This Hour, On Point: Frank Bruni’s inner strength — and rating the perfect meal.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

Guests:

Frank Bruni, restaurant critic for The New York Times from 2004 until this month. He’s the author of “Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater.” His recent article in The New York Times Magazine, “I Was a Baby Bulimic,” was adapted from the book.

Read an excerpt (PDF file) from “Born Round.”

**Check out more of On Point’s food coverage:

Mark Bittman on Intelligent Eating; Anthony Bourdain on “Medium Raw”; Michael Pollan’s ‘Food Rules’; Gourmet’s Ruth Reichl: “Not Becoming My Mother”Sweet Lightning: Extreme Chocolate.

 
  • Pauline Ucci Dyson

    Bruni is playing the blame game on the Italian-American eating experience. As one with this same heritage myself and with poorItalian parents (unlike Bruno, we had no cleaning lady) and as a first generation American I grew up in the 40′s and 50′s with the same homemade pasta that Bruni had…I ask why didn’t his siblings suffer from the same bulimia that Frank experienced??? Genetic tortural relationship with what we eat…nonsense!
    Say say BASTA with the PASTA!

  • Evelyn

    Mr. Bruni alluded to his relationship with food as that of an addiction, like a drug. Has he heard of overeaters anonymous? There are MILLIONS of people like him who have found recovery through OA. It isn’t healthy on many levels to let food control your life. It isn’t just about being heavy. http://www.oa.org

  • Isernia

    iT’S AN OLD JOKE….Did the French Laundry take the New York Times to the cleaners after Frank and his brother’s 75 dish, five hour dinner there?

  • Richard Franks

    It appears the cachet of the New York Times will help you get practically anything published. This trivial piece of self-indulgence is a step beyond boring into the region of stupefying. Any of my friends is more interesting that this guy.

  • Giuseppe Castellacci

    I grew up in Rome, and know exactly what Mr. Bruni meant when he shared his savoring pizza bianca covered with ricotta. The “Antico Forno” in Campo de’ Fiori has one of the best pizza biancas. Also, a low key bakery in the Jewish quarter has renown thin and crusty pizza bianca, and I think a wood-fired oven too.

    Another old-fashioned Roman sandwich would be pizza bianca with prosciutto and figs.
    I had it the other day here in good ole New York City, courtesy of Sullivan Street Bakery. Alas, their pizza bianca is not as exquisitely crusty as some of their best batons.
    In fairness, pizza bianca tastes best when it barely “remembers” the oven.
    A state of grace that is hard to replicate in the fast pace of food distribution.

  • Isernia

    Count me as one of the numerous Rome travellers that have enjoyed pizza bianca at
    Antico Forno in the Campo di Fiori. The place has been publicized so much in the past fifty years I’ve been going to Rome..in tour books, fiction and non-fiction, that its popularity is not surprising. The wait at midday because of the crowds can be too long if one is very hungry or late for an appointment. Interestingly, as reported by Sig. Castellacci in the post above, there are other places to buy the same exquisite pizza. One closest to where I stay in Rome is at a bakery run by two brothers in the Monteverdi section. There housewifes have to compete with laborers on their lunch break for the fast-selling pieces. Pizza bianca is sold out by one in the afternoon…with its first pieces sold as soon as it emerges from the ovens late morning. Unlike pizza rosso which might mean dripping tomato on one’s clothing, the white variety makes superb eating out of hand along the markets and piazzas close to where it is purchased. I believe that pizza bianca is perhaps the only “fast food” eaten on the streets of crowded citie such as Rome with the possible exception of gelato.

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