Between Two Waters: Heritage, landscape and the modern cook

When world-class chef Pam first opened Inver, her restaurant on the shores of Loch Fyne, she set out to discover what makes ‘modern Scottish food’ – or if it even existed. This book traces Pam’s journey to answer that question and in doing so reveals what we can all gather from our culinary heritage. Part memoir, part manifesto on the future of feeding the world and a feminist critique of the food business, it documents the difficult early days of her now multiple award-winning restaurant, reflecting on how the immersive experience of ‘destination restaurants’ can both help and hinder our understanding of wider land and food culture.From the soil to the kitchen, Between Two Waters interrogates the influences on what we eat: capitalism, colonialism and gender, as well as our own personal and cultural histories. Yet it also captures with real heart all that the dinner table has to offer us: sustenance, both physical and imaginative, challenges and adventure and, most importantly, communion with others.More than anything, it is a blisteringly original work from one of the world’s most innovative thinkers about food, sustainability and landscape.

Reviews of Between Two Waters: Heritage, landscape and the modern cook

What a book, what a cook, what a woman, what a mind! This vital and marvellous voice in food weaves the toils and triumphs of a restaurant and a gravely wounded planet with informed verve — JEREMY LEE, chef proprietor of Quo Vadis and author of COOKING In Between Two Waters, Pam Brunton attempts to reconcile history and modernity without flinching at how colonialism, capitalism and extraction have determined the globalised ways we eat today – and shows that we could change our menus for the better. Using her native Scotland as the lens, Brunton tears through the weeds of the global food system with aplomb — ALICIA KENNEDY, author of NO MEAT REQUIRED