The architect Mies van der Rohe coined the phrase "less is more" to describe the virtues of minimalism in art. The sprawling set pieces of an epic like "War and Peace," minimalists might argue, distract readers from appreciating the simple joys of a summer day or a delicious and ripe piece of fruit (so famously celebrated by the poet William Carlos Williams in his poem "This Is Just to Say").

However, the obvious and oft-levied riposte to "less is more" is "less is less." Sometimes silence is eloquent, but other times silence is just silence. This is exactly the problem with Lara Vapnyar's second story collection, "Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love." At its perfect pitch, Vapnyar's delicate manner of storytelling can be striking in its lack of artifice. But there are too many dead-end moments in this slender volume of six stories, which, with the aid of large type, small page size and a genre-defying "Roundup of Recipes" at the back, barely amounts to 148 pages.

A Russian-American emigre for whom English is her second language, Vapnyar made her name on the U.S. literary scene a few years back with her debut story collection "There Are Jews in My House," an occasionally uneven but mostly sharp-eyed look at communism, anti-Semitism and sex in Russian culture. Vapnyar's sophomore effort, a novel titled "Memoirs of a Muse," was the story of a Russian-American emigre who shacks up with an American literary lion while trying to acclimate to her new country.

In her latest book, Vapnyar gathers together six stories related to the intersection of two of the most basic human needs: food and love. (Surprisingly, and gratifyingly, she does not reference the famous line from Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night": "If music be the food of love, play on.") The two themes intersect most memorably in the story "Luda and Milena," featuring two elderly Russian women in Brooklyn who use their culinary skills to compete for the affections of an eligible widower in their English class. Vapnyar has some fun with the recipes, for example having Luda Russianize a televised Food Network recipe for Greek feta-and-spinach pie by substituting cabbage for the spinach. The story also works well as a showcase for the inevitable ethnic hijinks that occur in a multi-national ESL class, as the two women build alliances among the various students. The competition between Luda and Milena builds satisfyingly to the story's slightly surprising climax and ironic resolution.

The story "Slicing Sauteed Spinach" eschews the humor of "Luda and Milena" for pathos. Here the protagonist is Ru?zena, a Czech emigre in New York who invents an imaginary fiance so that her lover (who is engaged) won't think she's hung up on him. Not exactly the most original of plots, so Vapnyar dresses it up with food, in this case, the spinach-based dishes that Ru?zena always orders in front of her lover because she's afraid of trying something new: "So many choices! So easy to make an embarrassing one!"

Sigrid Estrada Lara Vapnyar began publishing stories in English in 2002, eight years after she emigrated from Russia.

You don't need a Ph.D. in literature to figure out that Ru?zena's failure to order something besides spinach is a metaphor for her failure to break out of her dysfunctional relationship with her American lover. It's a theme that repeats in the story "Puffed Rice and Meatballs," in which the main character, Katya (who for a page of the story is confusingly referred to as "Ru?zena"), also has an unfulfilling American boyfriend. In this case, the American wants his East European lover to regale him with tales of suffering under communist rule, but Katya can't think of any: "The request startled her. What exactly were the horrors of communism? ... Was having to wear a red tie horrible, or standing in a two-hour line to see Lenin's body in his tomb, or standing in an even longer line to buy toilet paper? Katya didn't think so. It was rather funny. Even nostalgic now."

Therefore, instead of a political memory, Katya narrates an episode of sexual discovery, a bit of playing doctor with a classmate in kindergarten, which got her into trouble. And then the story stops, but doesn't quite end, leaving the reader to wonder why it ever began.

Vapnyar's strategy of irresolution works more effectively in the story "Borscht." The hero, Sergey, is a Russian laborer working temporarily in America to earn money for an apartment for his wife back home. Sexually frustrated, he seeks out the services of a cut-rate prostitute named Alla, who turns out to be woefully unattractive. As the story goes on, Alla, whose coarseness is wonderfully evoked by her cheap clothing as well as her frank speech ("What do you think I am, some kind of prostitute?"), also proves capable of surprising tenderness. In a moment of touching sympathy, she serves Sergey a bowl of steaming borscht with a shot of vodka, and the two eat and drink in honor of the memory of home.

While there are many amusing moments in these stories, the characters and themes of dislocation and loneliness quickly wear out their welcome. Yes, we know immigrants in a new culture feel displaced. Yes, we know it's hard to find love in a new land when you don't speak the language. We know all this because we've read about these issues in countless works by other immigrant authors. However, these authors examine in depth what "Broccoli" only hints at: a sense of the rich complexity of the immigrant experience, the difficult struggle to reconcile the cultural traditions of homes old and new. The difficulties of these struggles go beyond finding or not finding a boyfriend. They're about learning to see the world again from scratch. Vapnyar should know, as she's evoked the experience of transition and dislocation with much more richness in her previous work.

Perhaps as compensation for this lack of thematic or psychological complexity, Vapnyar lingers on the universal pleasures of food, the broccoli of her title, the traditional Russian bologna salad known by the oddly elegant name "salad Olivier," and, naturally, the borscht. The trouble is that Vapnyar's gastronomic descriptions too often come off as simplistic rather than simple, for example when Milena's "perfect" cheese puffs are echoed in the ingredients of Alla's borscht, a "perfect harmony" of beets, fat, sour cream and parsley, and again in the "perfect" carrot slices in the title story. The "warm aroma of broccoli ... caressing Nina's face, enveloping the whole of her" at the end of "A Bunch of Broccoli on the Third Shelf" seems awfully similar to the "great immediate warmth spreading down [Sergey's] throat and chest" that concludes "Borscht." (The message is all too obvious: When you're feeling down, food can be comforting.) It's too bad, because every so often Vapnyar offers some striking images, like this evocation of a plate of overcooked spinach: "twisted brown strips [that] resembled malnourished earthworms."

In the end, "Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love" is like a thin soup with occasional bits of flavor popping up unexpectedly in the broth: okay, but just not satisfying enough to make a meal.

Aaron Hamburger is the author of the short-story collection "The View From Stalin's Head" and the novel "Faith for Beginners."