Cooking is seduction. In Cook to Bang, Spencer Walker coaches novice cooks and seduction artists on how to turn feasting into fucking. Walker reinvents the clichéd "wine and dine" style of dating by bringing it home, playing up the advantages of inviting a woman over for dinner rather than taking her out. Cooking provides an experience, is cheap and positions you within striking distance of your bed — and it shows a date that you can not only bring home the bacon, you can wrap it around a scallop and sear it to perfection.
Like most naive, horny young men, Walker tried taking women to fancy restaurants only for them to bring leftovers home to their booty-calls. He soon discovered, "[t]here is no ratio for the amount of money spent to sexual activity unless you hire a hooker." Instead of learning guitar or joining a frat in college, cooking became Walker's gimmick for getting laid. This led to a career as a chef and the website cooktobang.com.
Cook to Bang's premise is more original than most cookbooks, promising impressive dishes that are cheap, laced with aphrodisiacs and absent of gassy ingredients. Unfortunately Cook to Bang can't be used for quick reference like most cookbooks. Recipes are scattered throughout the text and aren't accompanied by pictures of the finished product. For meal ideas, the Cook to Bang website is far superior.
As a humorous read and seduction manual, the book fares better. Except for the "Cook to Bang" slogan peppered throughout the text like a self-help mantra, the writing is surprisingly entertaining. It's easy for a cocksure voice like Walkers to become annoying, but he channels his inner asshole perfectly and never backs down from his aggressive tone. The only time this voice feels forced is when describing innumerable hook-ups that fit perfectly into each section.
Most of the seduction advice is solid, if basic. His tips get better the closer they relate to cooking: a dinner should create the illusion of being effortless; a five-course meal screams of desperation; eat at a table to foster eye contact and to showcase your work; "presentation is as essential to culinary seduction as lube is for anal."
Most of the book is broken down into lists of key ingredients accompanied by related recipes like "Miso Horny Cod" and "Tap that Ass-paragus Soup." The recipes for homemade cocktails like sangria or mojitos are particularly useful, as is the wine cheat sheet. He even provides a list of delicacies that are appropriate to eat off each other, foods that will make a date gassy, and ingredients that are aphrodisiacs. Walker's only questionable culinary advice is his advocacy of breath-souring foods like garlic and onions.
Straddling the line between seduction guide and cookbook, Cook to Bang also hovers between the practical and absurd. An entire section dedicated to matching dishes to classes of slut like "Hipster Ho-Bags" and "Sororiteases" sinks into entertaining-but-impractical ridiculousness. The book also lacks solid strategies for phase-shifting from eating to sex, and I doubt the post-dinner game, "Popsicle or cocksicle?" would work on a first date.
Cook to Bang offers a basic introduction to cooking and seduction. It makes an ideal housewarming gift for young men moving into their first apartment or dorm. It's also an entertaining way to get a boyfriend or husband interested in cooking, or to heat up a simmering romance. While Cook to Bang may not help you with talking to strangers, or convincing one to come over, it serves as an accelerant for a slow-moving relationship, a way to re-frame your relationship with your hot neighbor, or as a tool for breaking out of the friend-zone. Just pray your date doesn't find your copy under the futon while you're making the Eggs Whorentine.
Listen to the CL Sexcast interview with Spencer Walker on cltampa.com/sexandlove.