This highly original interpretation of Rome's history, culture, art and religion takes the form of a book about food that's not really about food at all. During his first two years in Rome, David Winner found himself in turn amazed and overwhelmed by its physical, historical and cultural vastness. Then a chance encounter with an extraordinary pudding provided him with the means to start digesting his surroundings. That evening he was struck by the significance of the Roman attitude to food: a unique and unequivocal relationship between sustenance and existence, where every last aspect of life is (and always has been) 'pickled in alimentation'. In Al Dente, Winner takes us on a stroll through the city as he muses idiosyncratically on all things comestible and much else besides.