The recipes and advice given in this cookbook are almost universally ridiculously expensive, involved, labor intensive, anxiety inducing, and almost certainly prone to failure.  Just like dating itself!  [rimshot]

Booty Food is a Cosmopolitan Magazine level look at the art and stagecraft of cooking.  It goes well beyond cooking and the predictable topic of aphrodisiac foods, and edges into the territory of advice about how to prep your home for a date (clean it up) how to do a tequila body shot (lasciviously) and so forth.  

It is, I gather, aimed at the older female audience.  Not necessarily "cougars," since I believe that specifically implies dating younger men.  And I can certainly see older men being the goal here.  Let's be honest, is a 22 year old guy really going to be impressed by what you do with a slice of prosciutto?  Something about the implied opulence speaks to me of stock brokers, of bank managers, and of other staid yet masculine professions.  

There are no recipes for the easily impressed here.  In fact, the audience is presumed to be quite jaded.  How else to explain the recipe which requires you to juice your own pomegranates to make pomegranate martinis?  Although it reluctantly sidebars that you can buy pomegranate juice at the grocery store.  Yes you can, and if you - like me - have ever tried to juice a pomegranate, then you will scoff at the suggestion that you should do anything but buy the juice as a standalone item.

I am left with the impression that these are recipes for people who avidly read Gourmet Magazine and Martha Stewart Living during the 80s and 90s.  Which should give you a framework for the age of the audience right there, frankly.

The recipes themselves are peculiar to say the least.  From "grilled red bliss potatoes with wasabi crème fraiche and sevruga caviar" to "post coital lobster eggs benedict," these are not works for the beginner to attempt.  I can't help but wonder if anyone should attempt them under the given circumstances, i.e. as a date, or post-date.

By the time I was halfway through Booty Food, I was laughing at the very idea of the book.  I cannot imagine circumstances under which I would prepare lobster eggs benedict for anyone, much less on The Next Morning.  Why risk the failure and the mess?  You aren't being graded on the difficulty of the cooking you attempt - not that I know of, anyway.  And if the author sees fit to include a suggested schedule to help guide the order in which you prep and cook post-coital lobster eggs benedict, mimosas, and home fries, it just makes it all the sillier.

Aside from adding new layers of meaning to the term "food porn," Booty Food is one of those aspirational cookbooks which is more fun to think about than it is to attempt.  Perhaps if you live in a glossy black lacquered apartment in Manhattan, and you have house staff to take care of the details of life (like the shopping and the dishwashing) then it might be worth it.  Otherwise?  Probably not so much.