In one way, there’s not much to it: some fairly standard childhood memories; a half-funny anecdote about the time Meryl Streep ordered andouillette (a stinky sausage made with chitterlings) in a French bistro; an account of the (to him, frankly batty) manner in which his British wife roasts potatoes. But in another way, it is… oh, dear. How to frame this for a family newspaper? Suffice to say that when he gets going, Tucci can make a woman feel quite agitated. Why, she may think wildly, will he not treat me to spaghetti con le zucchine alla Nerano at La Scoglio on the Amalfi coast?.

If you’re looking for detail on the career of the great character actor Stanley Tucci, you should probably pass on his lovely new memoir Taste: My Life Through Food.

... a gastronome’s delight. It has piquant surprises tucked inside and will leave readers both sated and wanting more.

... enters a bloated genre that has a high bar. Is his eating life so distinctive that it stands out from all the other writers’ and warrants expansive narration? The answer is yes and no. I kept wishing he’d teased out more themes — beyond, simply, his gusto — to tie together his days as an Italian-American boy whose lunchbox shamed his classmates’ and his international jaunts as a movie star who judges locations based on the quality of food in and around the set.

Lest readers drown in Tucci’s mouthwatering food descriptions (minus that one, ill-advised French sausage), plenty of recipes appear for reproducing everything from his family’s Sunday ragù to his English wife’s crispy roasted potatoes and a cocktail or three. Easily flipping from tongue-in-cheek supercilious to self-deprecation, Tucci is the formal-yet-unpretentious, companionable narrator fans will expect. A late, heartfelt chapter lets readers into Tucci’s until-now private battle with tongue cancer in recent years, and the physically and emotionally challenging recovery that confirmed, as he was hardly able to eat, the important role food plays in his life, happiness, and love for others..