The Urban Picnic (Being an Idiosyncratic and Lyrically Recollected Account of Menus, Recipes, History, Trivia, and Admonitions on the Subject of Alfresco Dining in Cities Both Large and Small)

“The latest fashion among young city-dwellers, providing a new advertising niche for manufacturers of luxury products, is the good old family picnic.”—Le Monde

“An upper-class English ritual traditionally confined to rural French life, the picnic has been rebranded.”—The Economist

“The great charm of this social device is undoubtedly the freedom it affords. . . . To eat cold chicken and drink iced claret under trees, amid the grass and the flowers.”—Appleton’s Journal of Literature, Science, and Art, 1869

Urban picnics are a hot foodie trend right now; from The Economist to Le Monde, food journalists and lovers the world around are jumping on the blanket. Like so many of us, they want to put their hectic city lives on hold and enjoy themselves—without having to head off into the hinterland. The Urban Picnic is designed for modern gourmands and kitchen newcomers alike to inspire them to introduce a little pleasure and picnickery into their lives. With an irreverent and highly opinionated history of the picnic, strange accounts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, original illustrations and over 200 recipes—many contributed from renowned chefs such as Nigella Lawson, Mark Bittman, Regan Daley and Bob Blumer—it’s the essential how-to (and how-not-to) for anyone who was ever looking for a tasty little morsel to eat under that tree that grows in Brooklyn. Two-color throughout.

Recipes include:

Barbecued Lemon Chicken (Anne Lindsay)
Banana-Strawberry Layer Cake (Regan Daley)
Mint Julep Peaches (Nigella Lawson)
Chicken Liver Crostini (Umberto Menghi)
Ahi Tuna Salad with Green Papaya (Rob Feenie)