review by Jeremy M. Barker - Issue 18

The Decadent Cookbook is, as the name suggests, actually a cookbook, but “decadent” is not an adjective herein. The Decadent was a restaurant that operated for about three years in the north of England, a complete word-of-mouth affair that made waves with its unusual cuisine. The authors, Lucan and Gray, were the restaurant’s proprietors, and the fare they served and the atmosphere they created is no doubt a stand-out in the history of gastronomy.

Have you ever wanted to eat what the ancient Romans ate? Have you ever thought to yourself, “How on earth would one go about cooking a kitten?” As shocking as this sounds, The Decadent Cookbook can explain both and more. While we certainly don’t want you to actually try this at home (animal abuse laws would no doubt be violated in the process), The Decadent Cookbook is so strange and discomfiting that it’s a must-read for any serious sinner. Part recipe book, part meditation on the history of world cuisine, it’s engrossing, amusing, and slightly disturbing. The Decadent catered to no one except the adventurous spirit of its remarkable restaurateurs, and although you probably wouldn’t want to eat there (one discovers in the book a remarkably wide array of cooking applications for a whole animal skin), it is absolutely interesting.

For instance, cooked kittens—as cruel as it is, old editions of the bible of French cooking, the “Larousse Gastronomique,” were where Lucan and Gray got the recipes. Not to add anymore anti-French sentiment to the American public, it should be noted that the French didn’t make a habit of eating kittens. It was the result of a Paris starving to death while besieged by the Prussians during the infamous Paris Commune in the 1870s. You didn’t know that? Well, you would and more if you read The Decadent Cookbook.