Author: Andreas Viestad

Andreas Viestad is a Norwegian food writer who uses cooking to explain history, trade, agriculture, and cultural exchange. Dinner in Rome begins at La Carbonara, a restaurant in Campo de' Fiori, and follows one meal outward through centuries of global history. Reaktion Books published the English edition in 2022 under the fuller title Dinner in Rome: A History of the World in One Meal. Bread leads Viestad to wheat and Rome's rise, olive oil opens a discussion of religion and commerce, and lemon sorbet connects sugar and citrus to exploitation and organized power. Other ingredients, including salt, pepper, wine, meat, and pasta, keep the argument anchored to what is actually on the table. Viestad has written numerous cookbooks and presented New Scandinavian Cooking, but this book is culinary history rather than a recipe collection. Its structure makes an ordinary dinner the organizing device for a broad account of how food carries evidence about labor, empire, belief, and migration.