Culinary Memoir

It was Rachel Signer's dream to be that girl: the one smoking hand-rolled cigarettes out the windows of her 19th-century Parisian studio apartment, wearing secondhand Isabel Marant jeans and sipping a glass of Beaujolais redolent of crushed roses with a touch of horse mane. Instead she was an under-appreciated freelance journalist and waitress in New York City, frustrated at always being broke and completely miserable in love. When she tastes her first pétillant-naturel (pét-nat for short), it sets her on a journey of self-discovery.

In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman - and never went home again. Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pavé au poivre, the steak's pink juices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce? Lunch in Paris is a memoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionate love affairs - one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine.

In this dual memoir, Mashama Bailey and John O. Morisano take turns telling how they went from tentative business partners to dear friends while turning a dilapidated formerly segregated Greyhound bus station into The Grey, now one of the most celebrated restaurants in the country. Recounting the trying process of building their restaurant business, they examine their most painful and joyous times, revealing how they came to understand their differences, recognize their biases, and continuously challenge themselves and each other to be better.

Call Me Chef, Dammit! is the inspiring story of Andre Rush, who became an overnight sensation in 2018, after a photograph of his now-famous 24-inch biceps went viral. However, his journey to that moment could never be captured in a fleeting moment.

>Starting with the Thanksgiving turkey that never quite finishes cooking, then moving to the polenta that unceremoniously goes runny and the guests who arrive a day early - there is no topic Tess Rafferty fails to encounter, or hilariously recount. Recipes for Disaster is as though Bridget Jones wrote a culinary narrative - the most pristine of intentions slowly disappear, as does the wine, along with any hope of a seamless and well-orchestrated dinner party.

In this witty and candid autobiographical mock epic, Fussell survives a motherless household during the Great Depression, gets married to the well-known writer and war historian Paul Fussell after World War II, goes through a divorce, and finally escapes to New York City in her mid-50s, batterie de cuisine intact.

When it opened a decade ago, the acclaimed Los Angeles speakeasy The Varnish - owned, designed, and managed by award-winning cocktail aficionado Eric Alperin - quickly became the stylish standard bearer for modern bars. Unvarnished is a candid, voice-driven, no-holds-barred look at the workings of a bar, and the foundation of The Varnish’s success: attention to hospitality and an abiding belief in the nobility of service.

GARLIC AND SAPPHIRES is Ruth Reichl's riotous account of the many disguises she employs to dine anonymously. There is her stint as Molly Hollis, a frumpy blond with manicured nails and an off-beige Armani suit that Ruth takes on when reviewing Le Cirque. The result: her famous double review of the restaurant: first she ate there as Molly; and then as she was coddled and pampered on her visit there as Ruth, New York Times food critic.

When Paul Graham was suddenly diagnosed with a serious wheat allergy at the age of 36, he was forced to say good-bye to traditional pasta, pizza, sandwiches, and more. Gone, too, were some of his favorite hobbies, including brewing beer with a buddy and gorging on his wife's homemade breads.

Before Chef Aaron Sanchez rose to fame on shows like MasterChef and Chopped, he was a restless Mexican-American son, raised by a fiercely determined and talented woman who was a successful chef and restaurateur in her own right. In this memoir, Sanchez delves into his formative years with remarkable candor, injecting his story with adrenaline and revealing how he fell in love with cooking and started a career in the fast-paced culinary world.

When the world becomes overwhelming, Ella Risbridger focuses on the little things that bring her joy, like enjoying a glass of wine when cooking, FaceTiming with a friend whilst making bagels and sharing recipes that are good for the soul. One night she found herself lying on her kitchen floor, wondering if she would ever get up - and it was the thought of a chicken, of roasting it, and of eating it, that got her to her feet and made her want to be alive.

In The Food and Wine of France, influential food writer Edward Behr investigates French cuisine and what it means, in encounters from Champagne to Provence. He tells the stories of French artisans and chefs who continue to work at the highest level. Many people in and out of France have noted for a long time the slow retreat of French cuisine, concerned that it is losing its important place in the country's culture and in the world culture of food. And yet, as Behr writes, good French food remains very, very delicious.

Ian Purkayastha is New York City's leading truffle importer and boasts a devoted clientele of top chefs nationwide, including Jean-Georges Vongerichten, David Chang, Sean Brock, and David Bouley. But before he was purveying the world's most expensive fungus to the country's most esteemed chefs, Ian was just a food-obsessed teenager in rural Arkansas - a misfit with a peculiar fascination for rare and exotic ingredients. The son of an Indian immigrant father and a Texan mother, Ian learned to forage for wild mushrooms from an uncle in the Ozark hills.

Hannah Selinger chronicles her rise and fall in the restaurant business, beginning with the gritty hometown pub where she fell in love with the industry and ending with her final post serving celebrities at the Hamptons classic Nick & Toni’s. In between, listeners will join Selinger on her emotional journey as she learns the joys of fine fine dining, the allure and danger of power, and what it takes to walk away from a career you love when it no longer serves you.

Who’s really behind America’s appetite for foods from around the globe? This group biography from an electric new voice in food writing honors seven extraordinary women, all immigrants, who left an indelible mark on the way Americans eat today. Taste Makers stretches from World War II to the present, with absorbing and deeply researched portraits of figures including Mexican-born Elena Zelayeta, a blind chef; Marcella Hazan, the deity of Italian cuisine; and Norma Shirley, a champion of Jamaican dishes.

Madhur (meaning sweet as honey) Jaffrey grew up in a large family compound by the Yamuna River in Delhi where her grandfather often presided over dinners with forty or more members of his extended family savoring together the wonderfully flavorful dishes that were forever imprinted on Madhur's palate.

Sasha Martin set herself a rather ambitious goal: to cook - and eat - her way around the world, with 196 recipes from196 countries in 196 weeks. Enter Global Table Adventure, a project that proves to be more than just a culinary challenge as Sasha attempts to navigate the vicissitudes of marriage, motherhood, and life's failures and successes, all inextricably linked to her troubled past.

Because Ella Risbridger has learnt to focus on the little things that bring her joy, feeding as many people as she can squeeze round her tiny table and sharing recipes that are good for the soul. Miracle Pie is her journal and storybook of cooking, where the food is so good you want to lick the bowl, with recipes like fancy fish pie, cardamom-cinnamon chicken rice, chimichurri courgettes, triple carb soup, blackberry miso birthday cake, fried jam sandwiches and sticky toffee Guinness brownies.

Camas Davis was at an unhappy crossroads. A longtime magazine writer and editor in the food world, she'd returned to her home state of Oregon with her boyfriend from New York City to take an appealing job at a Portland lifestyle magazine. But neither job nor boyfriend delivered on her dreams, and in the span of a year, Davis was unemployed and on her own. Disillusioned by the years she’d spent mediating the lives of others for a living, she had no idea what to do next. She did know one thing: She no longer wanted to write about the real thing; she wanted to be the real thing.

Olia Hercules was born and brought up in Ukraine and has spent the past decade traveling around its vast terrain, collecting countless recipes, traditions and stories. She has made it her mission to preserve and document the many unique ways of life she has experienced in her place of origin–both across the country and within her own family–in the pages of her award-winning cookbooks, making her understanding of the land completely unique.