Slices of Life

This book sets out to present photo portraits and life stories that conclude with recipe suggestions intended to inspire the reader. The book's aim is achieved when - by cooking and eating the suggested dish - the reader ingests the Other in a unusual and unexpected 'transubstantiation'. Strangers, usually just glimpsed, here become trusted ma.tres d'h.tel who - if they don't poison you - give you the opportunity to look deeper into their worlds by telling you about their lives. Urban anthropophagy: allowing people to enter you through their food; letting them inside you by looking at them and listening to what they have to say. This book also offers itself up as an informal guide to London, where the city and its hustle and bustle stand in sharp relief to people's memories. A guide where a suburban backstreet may be as meaningful as Big Ben in the quest to understand the city, and where the real difference lies in the people we meet and the tales they tell of this vast metropolis teeming with human life. It is a guide book that invites you to take wrong turnings and a cookbook that says it is okay to accept recipes from strangers. Elia Romanelli Anthropologist and project director