I am a writer and food expert who spent her formative years in New York eating, drinking, serving, bartending, cooking on hotlines, and flipping giant wheels of cheese in Manhattan institutions such as Picholine and Fairway Market. I’ve been working in restaurants and writing about food my whole adult life, and I’m so lucky that food writing is both my profession and my passion. I’ve gotten to travel to Greece and Spain to learn about olive oil and olive trees, Colorado to visit cattle and beehives, and France’s Jura mountains to take a deep dive into Comté cheese. I teach food writing classes and write about food for a living, from my memoirs Feast and Plenty to articles about fancy salt, chefs, and cheesemakers.
The compulsively readable memoir of a woman at war―with herself, with her body, and with food―while working her way through the underbelly of New York City’s glamorous culinary scene.
Hannah Howard is a Columbia University freshman when she lands a hostess job at Picholine, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Manhattan. Eighteen years old and eager to learn, she’s invigorated by the manic energy and knife-sharp focus of the crew. By day Hannah explores the Columbia arts scene, struggling to find her place. By night she’s intoxicated by boxes of heady truffles and intrigued by the food industry’s insiders. She’s hungry for knowledge, success, and love, but she’s also ravenous because she hasn’t eaten more than yogurt and coffee in days.
Hannah is hiding an eating disorder. The excruciatingly late nights, demanding chefs, bad boyfriends, and destructive obsessions have left a void inside her that she can’t fill. To reconcile her relationships with the food she worships and a body she struggles to accept, Hannah’s going to have to learn to nourish her soul.
I loved Michelle Zauner’s essay by the same name when it came out in The New Yorker in 2018. I teach this essay in my Intro to Food Writing Class, and my students find it as moving and transporting as I do. Zauner’s new memoir—it came out in April—chronicles the decline of her mother's health and her own journey in finding her sense of self, often through the Korean dishes, ingredients, and flavors that connect her to her mom. The mother-daughter relationship is complex, full of love and pain, and the writing is gorgeous and sparkling.
The New York Times bestseller from the Grammy-nominated indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean mother, and forging her own identity in the wake of her loss.
'As good as everyone says it is and, yes, it will have you in tears. An essential read for anybody who has lost a loved one, as well as those who haven't' - Marie-Claire
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer,…
In her memoir Blood, Bones and Butter, Gabrielle Hamilton’s journey from wayward teenager to New York City chef unfolds in tandem with ecstatic meals and poignant flavors. The book opens with her dad’s lamb roast for the whole town, six baby animals skewered with branches from their ash trees and left to spin on a spit in their expansive, wild yard in Lambertville, New Jersey. The roast is more than a mere party but a lesson in “how to create beauty where none exists, how to be generous beyond our means, how to change a small corner of the world just by making a little dinner for a few friends.” Eventually, Hamilton opens the beloved 30-seat Prune in New York’s East Village, taking this ethos with her and weaving a beautiful story along the way.
A sharply crafted and unflinchingly honest memoir. This is a rollicking, passionate story of food, purpose and family.
Blood, Bones & Butter follows the chef Gabrielle Hamilton's extraordinary journey through the places she has inhabited over the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; and the kitchen of her beloved Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton's idyllic past and her…
This now-classic catapulted Bourdain to celebrity status when it came out in 2000. I devoured it in high school, and it played no small part in my decision to pursue a career in restaurants. It glamorizes the crazy, counter-culture chef life without over-sentimentality—it remains refreshingly real. Bourdain’s quick punches, humor, and vulnerability make Kitchen Confidential a true joy to read even more than two decades later.
THE CLASSIC BESTSELLER: 'The greatest book about food ever written'
'A compelling book with its intriguing mix of clever writing and kitchen patois ... more horrifically gripping than a Stephen King novel' Sunday Times
'Extraordinary ... written with a clarity and a clear-eyed wit to put the professional food-writing fraternity to shame' Observer
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After twenty-five years of 'sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine', chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain decided to tell all - and he meant all.
From his first oyster in the Gironde to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown;…
Growing up, my mom was often cooking something from one of Jaffrey’s brilliant cookbooks. Jaffrey’s memoir about her childhood in Delhi and Kampur is just as delicious. It begins on the high mango trees, where the older cousins and siblings climbed to pick and slice the juicy fruits and the younger kids dipped them into salt, red chilies, and smoky cumin. Elaborate meals were served for a boisterous extended family, presided over by the benevolent but moody patriarch Babaji. Jaffrey writes with insightful precision about the Hindu, Muslim, and British influences that shaped her country, and the devastation of partition and its aftermath. When teenage Jaffrey leaves for acting school in London, her “palate had already recorded millions of flavors” from her home—and we’re so lucky it did.
'I was born in a sprawling house by the Yamuna River in Delhi. When I was a few minutes old, Grandmother welcomed me into the world by writing 'Om', which means 'I am' in Sanskrit, on my tongue with a little finger dipped in honey. When the family priest arrived to draw up my horoscope, he scribbled astrological symbols on a long scroll and set down a name for me, Indrani, or 'queen of the heavens'. My father ignored him completely and proclaimed my name was to be Madhur ('sweet as honey').' So begins Madhur Jaffrey's enchanting memoir of her…
Heavy is brilliant, poetic, and…really heavy. Laymon writes candidly and gorgeously about growing up Black in the South, struggling with weight, and a legacy of poverty, violence, and racism. Heavy is a personal, heartbreaking dive into American racism and America's deeply problematic weight obsession. The whole book is written as a letter to his mother, a prominent political scientist, and their relationship is incredibly complicated and painful. Heavy reminds us that food writing isn’t always about sweet nostalgia; it can be much darker and more profound.
*Named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, Buzzfeed (Nonfiction), The Undefeated, Library Journal (Biography/Memoirs), The Washington Post (Nonfiction), Southern Living (Southern), Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Times Critics*
In this powerful, provocative, and universally lauded memoir—winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and finalist for the Kirkus Prize—genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon “provocatively meditates on his trauma growing up as a black man, and in turn crafts an essential polemic against American moral rot” (Entertainment Weekly).
In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son…
Neuroscience PhD student Frankie Conner has finally gotten her life together—she’s determined to discover the cause of her depression and find a cure for herself and everyone like her. But the first day of her program, she meets a group of talking animals who have an urgent message they refuse to share. And while the animals may not have Frankie’s exalted human brain, they know things she doesn’t, like what happened before she was adopted.
To prove she’s sane, Frankie investigates her forgotten past and conducts clandestine experiments. But just when she uncovers the truth, she has to make an impossible choice: betray the animals she’s fallen in love with—or give up her last chance at success and everything she thought she knew.
Frankie Conner, first-year graduate student at UC Berkeley, is finally getting her life together. After multiple failures and several false starts, she's found her calling: become a neuroscientist, discover the cause of her depression and anxiety, and hopefully find a cure for herself and everyone like her.
But her first day of the program, Frankie meets a mysterious group of talking animals who claim to have an urgent message for her. The problem is, they're not willing to share it. Not yet. Not until she's ready.
While Frankie's new friends may not have her highly evolved, state-of-the-art, exalted human brain,…
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