Disclaimer: Received this as an advance reader copy via Netgalley and Quarto Publishing Group (Thank you!!!)

Imagine if your grandpa was a snooty, well traveled, retired chef, and he wrote a cookbook...

I almost wish I skipped the introduction to this cookbook, it really soured my perspective going in and bummed me out because I LOVE smaller plate recipes. Apparently, as someone from the U.S., I eat to live, feed at a trough of all-you-can-eat restaurants, drink beer or several martinis before meals on an empty stomach, admire men who are human garbage disposals, and apparently women like to brag to their dates about not being cooks. It's not clear to me why the author needed to disparage us in this way, I mean sure, this may be an accurate description for some people, but it is not fair description for all of us, and it's off putting as a reader.

Throughout the book the author makes gross generalizations about people of various cultures in the chapter introduction. I don't think it's meant to be offensive, but it does seem to date the author as someone from an older generation who might not realize it's offensive. If anyone is to blame I would point a finger at the editor for not fixing these things.

Visually, the book has a lovely layout with many appealing color pictures of the finished dishes. The recipes themselves are not geared towards inexperience cooks, the instructions are clear, but, for example, if you've never cooked a live lobster, the instructions in the recipe aren't enough to adequately prepare you.

There are some good anecdotal tidbits parsed throughout that provide some historical context on ingredients and dish origins. I do plan to try the Tabbouleh recipe, and the Eggplant and Tomato Marmalade (when I have 4 hours to cook it down!).. If you have cook in your life who would like to expand their repertoire and would only look at the recipes, this could be a nice gift.

Chapters are Tapas from Spain; Hors d'Oeuvre from France; Antipasto from Italy, Mezze from Greece, Turkey, and the Balkans; and Mazza from the Middle East and North Africa. There is a great page called "The Basic Little Foods" of items that can be served with cocktails and require very little if any preparation. There are also tips for building platters and spreads. There is a wide variety of recipes, and while they can be served as small plates, many would also make a great meal. The book has beautiful color photos of some but not all of the dishes. There are versions of many well-known Mediterranean recipes, along with some I wasn't familiar with, and many of the recipes featured seafood or vegetables as I expected. The book ends with a list of Suggested Party Menus but specific to each country. I would have liked at least a couple of party menus that mixed things up, and photos for each dish throughout the book. Overall a good book for those interested in this topic.

This was a great cookbook with a nice variety of recipes. While I haven't tried making any of the recipes yet, they seem fairly straightforward to follow

I do wish that there were more photographs of the recipes, as it seemed they only accompanied every third or fourth recipe.

I enjoy Mediterranean food and was looking forward to this book. Beautiful pictures of mouth watering dishes were plentiful throughout. However I read this on my kindle. I soon realized that an reader is not the best way to peruse a cookbook. In reading some of the recipes I felt that the list of ingredients were too plentiful, not always readily available, and expensive.

This book gives you all the ides you need for small meals in the mediterranean genre. The tapas ideas are great primarily. But for me i was hoping for more variety in the meals.

I featured this book here:

https://www.bethfishreads.com/2022/08/6-books-for-food-and-wine-lovers.html

With links sent to Twitter and to Facebook.

There is nothing I love more than throwing a summer pool party and arranging a table full of small bites, crisp bottles of bubbles and wines du jour. And for that and so many reasons, I simply love this book!

Embark on a veritable trip around the Med, exploring culinary nibbles from France, Spain, Turkey, Italy, Morrocco, Greece and more.

Each dish is teed up with a short, historical description to whet your appetite and provide cultural context. The recipes are uncomplicated and full of fresh, easy-to-find. ingredients. The food styling is fun and playful. Helpful tips are sprinkled throughout if you are looking to try elevated techniques, like debearding mussels, cleaning octopus or preparing artichocke bottoms. The author even provides suggested party menus, organized by country.

This gem of a book is a must have for anyone who celebrates cooking, traveling, culture and gathering with friends.

I chose to read Mediterranean Small Plates because the publisher’s blurb teased both the quality of the photography and the ease of recipe preparation. Therefore, I was expecting a straightforward cookbook, with roughly as many photographs as recipes, geared toward the American home cook. It delivered to my most basic expectations, but something in the overall tone of the book put me off it.

Although the Introduction was a short five pages, I found the author’s stereotyping of Americans and idolizing of Mediterraneans quite off-putting. The American attitude toward food has come a long way from his first cookbook, which was published in 2003, especially considering the changes that happened during the US pandemic lockdowns. And what about his statement that “the best kind of cocktail party is one where no plates are required and servers pass through the crowd with savory bites”? Crowded cocktail parties may be a thing of the past thanks to social distancing requirements, and I’m not quite certain that hours d’oeuvres passed by servers were ever a staple of middle class American entertaining.

After the introduction, the recipes were divided into geographic sections: Spain, France, Italy, Greece, North Africa. Suggested party menus followed the last recipe section; however, the menus didn’t mix ideas across geography. The “easy to prepare recipes” teased in the publisher’s blurb were actually fairly straightforward, although I did have a gripe or two with the pâte á choux dough recipe presented in the French section. And that called into question some of the other more technical recipes that I’m not as familiar with. I didn’t find the recipe ingredients overall to be too exotic, but I live in a diversely populated suburb with a well-stocked supermarket and numerous ethnic specialty markets. The abundance of liver recipes struck me as a little odd, but the proportion of seafood recipes to red meat recipes to vegetable recipes seemed on par with other Mediterranean cookbooks that I’ve read (and bought and used in my kitchen). The “stunning photography” teased in the publisher’s blurb was on par with expectations for a full-color cookbook, but only accompanied every third or fourth recipe. The photographs were just of the recipes as prepared, and not of any recipe steps or Mediterranean sights.

In general, the book felt like a repackaging of the content that was previously published in 2003. Both the Introduction section and the introductions to the individual recipes were tone-deaf to the changes in the Middle East and North Africa due to the Syrian civil war and to the changes in lifestyles across the globe due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The introductions to the individual recipes were uneven, but a large proportion of the Spanish and French recipe introductions spoke of the author’s travels in those areas in a manner and tone that definitely turned me off.

I received this book as a digital advance reader copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion. I have yet to try any of the recipes from this book, but will update my review when I do.

I'd warn you not to read this book on an empty stomach because you will end up with your mouth watering and your stomach grumbling. "Mediterranean Small Plates" will spoil you for choice with recipes from Spain, France, Italy, Turkey, Greece, the middle East and Africa. Not only that, this book will help you every step of the way on your journey to create a feast. There's a list of staples to get in, tips on have to assemble your dishes and sample menus for entertaining. Context is provided for each recipe as well, so you .learn as you cook. It's a little heavy on the fish recipies for my liking but on the flip side, that's representative of the Mediterranean diet.
It's a cookbook that has got a lovely, summery. social feel to it.

Thank you to Clifford Wright, Quarto publishing and NetGalley for the opportunity to review an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is around 2.5 stars for me.

I suppose I was expecting more from this book. There are some interesting ideas, but this book is largely sea food and sides. Some of the ingredients are hard to find in the US and some of the recipes seem time intensive. Overall not what I was hoping for in terms of fun small plates.

Mediterranean Small Plates by Clifford Wright is a great recipe book with a variety of meals and skill levels. Full color photos and full instructions included for each recipe.

I received an ARC of this cookbook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a great cookbook. I enjoyed the recipes that I tried. They were delicious.

As I work to lose weight and get healthier, I leapt when I found Mediterranean Small Plates: Boards, Platters, and Spreads from the World's Healthiest Cuisine. I was enticed by each recipe, each photo, and found myself salivating as I dreamed of devouring this cuisine in Italy, France, Spain, and Greece. A global smorgasbord of recipes I'll be cooking every night. Highly recommended.

Thanks to the author, Quarto Publishing Group – Harvard Common Press, and NetGalley for the ARC. Opinions are mine.

I am one of those curious people who loves tasting lots of many things and was immediately attracted to the idea of a book on "small plates". I only bookmarked 2 recipes: the Octopus and Radicchio salad, and the Saffron Chicken and almond puff pastry crescent. But I admit that for people already familiar with French cooking, Italian cooking, Tapas and Mezze you probably won't find anything very exciting. This is a biginer's book.
The big plus of this book is how easy those recipes listed are to make (even if some ingredients might be hard to source, like specific types of sausages/cures hams...), they are very simple and require very easy steps and a small amount of things.
The pictures are ok, but the colours seem oddly muted, and a good quarter of the recipes don't have a picture. I'm definitly a picture person for recipes, as I often cook from inspiration rather than by following the full steps or ingredient list, so I need references to base my cooking on.

This is definitely a chef's cookbook. It feels very authentic but not very accessible or practical for me as a home cook in a rural area. There are a lot of recipes that call for things like octopus and these are definitely not frugal recipes. There are lovely photos but not of every recipe, and there is no nutritional information given. All that said, it will definitely strike a chord for those looking for truly authentic, high end Mediterranean dishes.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

This is a gorgeous looking book with some lovely sounding recipes. Unfortunately, there were a lot of ingredients that aren't particularly easy to source. Just not really for me.

As a non-italian person living in Italy for many years, I was curious to see how the book will represent the Mediterranean cuisine. You can clearly see that the book was written to American audience: the measurements, language style, explanations. Some passages were a little questionable for me, some parts felt like an explanation to a toddler. Overall, I would still say the book is a nice introduction but for Italian part the dishes that were chosen were a little less exiting and too plain. I get that we speak about starters and appetizers which supposed to be a small and easy bites of food, but the jumps from canapé and prosciutto/peach to calzone were a little weird. On one page you need 2 ingredients on the other 10. I still have to try some recipes from other countries and I don’t want to say the Italian part of the book was bad, not at all. For me it was just a little bit strange, I would’ve chosen different plates from different regions to show a full spectrum of the cuisine of Italy in terms of antipasti.

Mediterranean cooking is all the rage right now and for good reason! The food from the countries in these regions is flavorful and healthy. This little cookbook hones in on dishes that would be perfect for cocktail parties, with most of the recipes being for appetizers. It was fun reading the different recipes and I found quite a few that I would like to try. Also, the photographs are beautiful. That being said, many of the recipes incorporated ingredients that are not easily accessible to the average person. I have never seen octopus or saffron threads in my grocery store. I recommend this book to adventurous cooks who have access to diverse grocery stores. I don't think you will be disappointed!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group-HarvardCommon Press for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I love the concept of this cookbook. After all, who doesn't love Mediterranean food? This would be a great cookbook to pull off the shelf if you were having a dinner party and wanted an appetizer with drinks before dinner.
I could also see myself having friends over for cocktails and selecting one of the menus provided near the end of the book. In my opinion, this is a cookbook for people who collect cookbooks. It's also for those who are willing to spend time sourcing ingredients and also enjoy cooking meals using hard to find ingredients, for example shark and octopus. For those who don't enjoy poring over a cookbook there are simple recipes also. I recommend this book for home cooks who enjoy learning about new and unique foods.

Thank you Quarto Publishing Group - Harvard Common Press and NetGalley for an ARC.

I love tapas/small plates so I was quite excited about this one, but ultimately it was pretty disappointing. I literally bookmarked ONE recipe to make, which is pretty shocking. But almost every recipe here managed to somehow contain an ingredient I dislike, seemed like far too much effort/used ingredients I just am not going to stock, or was for something I've already got a favorite recipe for. I didn't particularly love the layout and style here--it felt a little... vacation condo decor to me--and there were far too many recipes without photos. This one was a bit disappointing, unfortunately!