‘To Drink and To Eat’ is Delectable Culinary Comic

Author: Guillaume Long / Lion Forge Comics I love cooking media. I love cooking competitions TV shows. I love the weirdly niche anime that discusses food. I love comics that talk about unconventional ingredients. So when offered the chance to review Guillaume Long’s To Drink and To Eat: Tastes and Tales from a French Kitchen, I knew I couldn’t pass it up and wow, am I thankful that I picked up the book. One of the first images you’ll see in To Drink and To Eat is immediately after a humorous anecdote and table of contents. You get this neat little manual which instantly sets the tone for the rest of the book.

Long depicts a series of symbols that serve as a cipher of each vignette in his memoir, from recipes of varying levels, to short stories, to conversations he’s had with friends. The writing is clear, concise, with a sense of whimsy and joy and whether it’s referring to aforementioned sort stories as “egotrips” or the difficult to classify sections as “leftovers,” Long has a joyfulness and inviting approach to various culinary arts.

The comic itself is structured around the four different seasons, predictably starting with Spring and ending with Winter. As the seasons change, the ingredients and cuisine shift to match the temperature and it allows Long to cover a wide range of topics in an efficient matter. There is a distinct personality to the book, with Long’s art style excelling at capture the different moods of the kitchen and his handwriting imparting great charac…