After 10 months of working as a line cook, Layne Mosler's fantasy of opening her own restaurant fizzled, so she moved to Buenos Aires to follow another passion, the tango. But after one terrible night of dancing, when her partner committed the ultimate insult by abandoning her on the dance floor, Mosler needed solace, which she had always found through good food. She asked her taxi driver about his favorite restaurant and suddenly discovered a new way to learn about a city--through its food as recommended by the local drivers. Inspired by this, she started a blog, the Taxi Gourmet, to document her adventures.
After almost three years in Argentina and running out of tourist visas, she moved to New York, another city of taxis and good food, to continue her experiment. But when drivers there failed to recommend good places, Mosley became a taxi driver to find restaurants on her own, and discovered it was quite different to be behind the wheel in a huge city. Months passed, with Mosler still searching for something intangible. She eventually moved from New York to Berlin and continued interviewing taxi drivers for their restaurant recommendations.
Mosler's memoir is filled with lyrical explanations of dancing the tango in Buenos Aires, mouthwatering descriptions of the many meals she ate in Argentina, New York and Berlin, and humorous moments as passenger and as driver. She skillfully integrates her personal life, full of passions, problems, expectations and disappointments, with brief portrayals of the varied lives of the men and women drivers she met as she explored these three different cities. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer