Published by Traveler’s Tales, 2001, 248 pages

Food and travel—what more could you want? Her Fork in the Road is a collection of pieces by women writers including MFK Fisher, Isabel Allende, Francis Mayes, and Dervla Murphy.

I love the way that the taste and smell of a particular food can immediately transport you to a place and time. The smell of chapatis cooking over a coal stove takes me back to my grandmother’s house and the expectation of a delicious lunch.

These women writers write evocatively about food—either eaten on their travels to other countries or cities or by exploring the surroundings where they live. It is a real smorgasbord of what Bach calls “the world’s culinary bounty”—a lot of it appetizing and some a little stomach-churning, even for me, who is usually quite adventurous about food. No less fascinating are the people they eat with and those make and serve the food.

MFK Fisher is the only customer in a restaurant in rural France and is served by a slightly manic waitress. The waitress determined that her captive audience sample as much of the menu as she can, keeps bringing out plates of food until Fisher staggers out, happy and sated.

Margi O’Connell-Hood finds the place where the perfect curry is made, in the backwaters of Malaysia. She joins the women who earn their livelihood stirring it, one of whom has a business degree but has come back to follow in the footsteps of her mother and grandmother.

Ashley Palmer gets involved in an “unfamiliar food” competition with a Japanese grandmother (the grandmother wins). Isabel Allende samples alligator and piranhas with the Sateré Maué Indians in the Amazon.

Some of the stories are more personal. Laura Harger remembers eating blue crabs as a child with her dying mother; Michelle Hamilton overcomes anorexia as she hikes around the US; and Chitrita Banerji writes about the foods forbidden to her mother when she becomes a widow.

This is just a sample of the variety of experiences in this book that make it so enjoyable. As with all compilations, there are pieces that are better than others. My one complaint is that the voices are not diverse enough. With a few exceptions, most of the writers are from the United States. I would have loved to have heard from more women from around the world.

Maybe it’s time to bring out another collection?

This review first appeared on Women on the Road.