From how food is used to express love to groundbreaking movements in the culinary world, these page-turning food memoirs are as easy to devour as your favorite meal.
Eat a Peach: A Memoir by David Chang and Gabe Ulla
From the chef behind Momofuku and star of Netflix’s Ugly Delicious—an intimate account of the making of a chef, the story of the modern restaurant world that he helped shape, and how he discovered that success can be much harder to understand than failure.
In 2004, Momofuku Noodle Bar opened in a tiny, stark space in Manhattan’s East Village. Its young chef-owner, David Chang, worked the line, serving ramen and pork buns to a mix of fellow restaurant cooks and confused diners whose idea of ramen was instant noodles in Styrofoam cups. It would have been impossible to know it at the time—and certainly Chang would have bet against himself—but he, who had failed at almost every endeavor in his life, was about to become one of the most influential chefs of his generation, driven by the question, “What if the underground could become the mainstream?”
Full of grace, candor, grit, and humor, Eat a Peach chronicles Chang’s switchback path. He lays bare his mistakes and wonders about his extraordinary luck as he recounts the improbable series of events that led him to the top of his profession. He wrestles with his lifelong feelings of otherness and inadequacy, explores the mental illness that almost killed him, and finds hope in the shared value of deliciousness. Along the way, Chang gives us a penetrating look at restaurant life, in which he balances his deep love for the kitchen with unflinching honesty about the industry’s history of brutishness and its uncertain future.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
David Chang recording the audiobook for Eat a Peach.
Be My Guest: Reflections on Food, Community, and the Meaning of Generosity by Priya Basil
A thought-provoking meditation on food, family, identity, immigration, and, most of all, hospitality—at the table and beyond—that’s part food memoir, part appeal for more authentic decency in our daily worlds, and in the world at large.
Be My Guest is an utterly unique, deeply personal meditation on what it means to tend to others and to ourselves–and how the two things work hand in hand. Priya Basil explores how food—and the act of offering food to others—are used to express love and support. Weaving together stories from her own life with knowledge gleaned from her Sikh heritage; her years spent in Kenya, India, Britain, and Germany; and ideas from Derrida, Plato, Arendt, and Peter Singer, Basil focuses an unexpected and illuminating light on what it means to be both a host and a guest. Lively, wide-ranging, and impassioned, Be My Guest is a singular work, at once a deeply felt plea for a kinder, more welcoming world and a reminder that, fundamentally, we all have more in common than we imagine.
Soon to Be Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Coming in November!
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Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Rebel Chef: In Search of What Matters by Dominique Crenn and Emma Brockes
The inspiring and deeply personal memoir from highly acclaimed chef Dominique Crenn—story of one woman making a place for herself in the kitchen, and in the world.
By the time Dominique Crenn decided to become a chef, at the age of twenty-one, she knew it was a near impossible dream in France where almost all restaurant kitchens were run by men. So, she left her home and everything she knew to move to San Francisco, where she would train under the legendary Jeremiah Tower. Almost thirty years later, Crenn was awarded three Michelin Stars in 2018 for her influential restaurant Atelier Crenn, and became the first female chef in the United States to receive this honor—no small feat for someone who hadn’t gone to culinary school or been formally trained.
In Rebel Chef, Crenn tells of her untraditional coming-of-age as a chef, beginning with her childhood in Versailles where she was emboldened by her parents to be curious and independent. But there is another reason Crenn has always felt free to pursue her own unconventional course. Adopted as a toddler, she didn’t resemble her parents or even look traditionally French. Growing up she often felt like an outsider, and was haunted by a past she knew nothing about. But after years of working to fill this blank space, Crenn has embraced the power her history gives her to be whoever she wants to be.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger: A Memoir by Lisa Donovan
Renowned southern pastry chef Lisa Donovan’s memoir of cooking, survival, and the incredible power in reclaiming the stories of women.
Noted chef and James Beard Award-winning essayist Lisa Donovan helped establish some of the South’s most important kitchens, and her pastry work is at the forefront of a resurgence in traditional desserts. Yet Donovan struggled to make a living in an industry where male chefs built successful careers on the stories, recipes, and culinary heritage passed down from generations of female cooks and cooks of color. At one of her career peaks, she made the perfect dessert at a celebration for food-world goddess Diana Kennedy. When Kennedy asked why she had not heard of her, Donovan said she did not know. “I do,” Kennedy said, “Stop letting men tell your story.”
Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger is Donovan’s searing, beautiful, and searching chronicle of reclaiming her own story and the narrative of the women who came before her. Her family’s matriarchs found strength and passion through food, and they inspired Donovan’s accomplished career. Donovan’s love language is hospitality, and she wants to welcome everyone to the table of good food and fairness.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
An Onion in My Pocket: My Life with Vegetables by Deborah Madison
From the author of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (“The Queen of Greens,” The Washington Post)–a warm, bracingly honest memoir that also gives us an insider’s look at the vegetarian movement.
Thanks to her beloved cookbooks and groundbreaking work as the chef at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, Deborah Madison, though not a vegetarian herself, has long been revered as this country’s leading authority on vegetables. She profoundly changed the way generations of Americans think about cooking with vegetables, helping to transform “vegetarian” from a dirty word into a mainstream way of eating. But before she became a household name, Madison spent almost twenty years as an ordained Buddhist priest, coming of age in the midst of counterculture San Francisco.
In this charmingly intimate and refreshingly frank memoir, she tells her story—and with it the story of the vegetarian movement—for the very first time. From her childhood in Big Ag Northern California to working in the kitchen of the then-new Chez Panisse, and from the birth of food TV to the age of green markets everywhere, An Onion in My Pocket is as much the story of the evolution of American foodways as it is the memoir of the woman at the forefront. It is a deeply personal look at the rise of vegetable-forward cooking, and a manifesto for how to eat well.
Soon to Be Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Coming in November!
Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl
Trailblazing food writer and beloved restaurant critic Ruth Reichl took the job (and the risk) of a lifetime when she entered the high-stakes world of magazine publishing. Now, for the first time, she chronicles her groundbreaking tenure as editor in chief of Gourmet.
When Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America’s oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone’s boss. Yet Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no?
This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became an important part of popular culture, a time when the rise of the farm-to-table movement changed, forever, the way we eat. Readers will meet legendary chefs like David Chang and Eric Ripert, idiosyncratic writers like David Foster Wallace, and a colorful group of editors and art directors who, under Reichl’s leadership, transformed stately Gourmet into a cutting-edge publication. This was the golden age of print media—the last spendthrift gasp before the Internet turned the magazine world upside down.
Complete with recipes, Save Me the Plums is a personal journey of a woman coming to terms with being in charge and making a mark, following a passion and holding on to her dreams—even when she ends up in a place she never expected to be.
Available in Hardcover, Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Always Home: A Daughter’s Recipes & Stories by Fanny Singer; Foreword by Alice Waters
A cookbook and culinary memoir about growing up as the daughter of revered chef/restaurateur Alice Waters: a story of food, family, and the need for beauty in all aspects of life.
In this extraordinarily intimate portrait of her mother–and herself–Fanny Singer, daughter of food icon and activist Alice Waters, chronicles a unique world of food, wine, and travel; a world filled with colorful characters, mouth-watering traditions, and sumptuous feasts. Across dozens of vignettes with accompanying recipes, she shares the story of her own culinary coming of age and reveals a side of her legendary mother that has never been seen before. A charming, smart translation of Alice Waters’s ideals and attitudes about food for a new generation, Always Home is a loving, often funny, unsentimental, and exquisitely written look at a life defined in so many ways by food, as well as the bond between mother and daughter.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Fanny Singer recording the audiobook for Always Home.
Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton
Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily 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; Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family—the result of a prickly marriage that nonetheless yields lasting dividends. By turns epic and intimate, Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion.
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
People Who Love to Eat Are Always the Best People: And Other Wisdom by Julia Child
A charming collection of the beloved, bestselling author’s inimitable quotes—her words of wisdom on love, life, and, of course, food.
“If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.” So decrees Julia Child, the legendary culinary authority and cookbook author who taught America how to cook–and how to eat. This delightful volume of quotations compiles some of Julia’s most memorable lines on eating—“The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook”—on drinking, on life—“I think every woman should have a blowtorch”—on love, travel, France, and much more.
Soon to Be Available in Hardcover and eBook Editions.
Coming in November!
En español:
Arfodita: Cuentos, recetas y otros afrodisíacos by Isabel Allende
A personal ode to the pleasures of food and sex, Afrodita celebrates the sensual life with joy and imagination. Allende’s exuberance, storytelling ability, and naughty sense of fun make this memoir an irresistible treat for the senses. She spices her narrative with equal portions of humor and insight, blending personal reminiscence with folklore from around the world, historical legends, and memorable moments from literature—erotic and otherwise.
Assembling a feast of fascinating facts about the aphrodisiac powers of food and drink, Allende serves them up with both convincing admiration and due irreverence. She offers suggestions, both ancient and modern, for luring a lover, kindling sexual ardor, prolonging the act of love, and reviving flagging virility. Dipping into the cauldron of history, she reports on the lascivious appetites of everyone from the emperor Nero to Catherine the Great to France’s notorious Madame du Barry. A charmingly idiosyncratic look at the intertwined sensual arts of food and love.
Available in Trade Paperback.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen While You Eat:
Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi and Joshua David Stein
In this inspirational memoir about the intersection of race, fame, and food, Kwame Onwuachi shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age; a powerful, heartfelt, and shockingly honest account of chasing your dreams—even when they don’t turn out as you expected.
By the time he was twenty-seven years old, Kwame Onwuachi had opened—and closed—one of the most talked about restaurants in America. He had sold drugs in New York and been shipped off to rural Nigeria to “learn respect.” He had launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars made from selling candy on the subway and starred on Top Chef. Through it all, Onwuachi’s love of food and cooking remained a constant, even when, as a young chef, he was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the food world can be for people of color.
Available in Hardcover, Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Also Adapted for Young Adults: Notes from a Young Black Chef.
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Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Killing It: An Education by Camas Davis
A funny, heartfelt, searching memoir of Camas Davis’s unexpected journey from knowing magazine editor to humble butcher.
Camas Davis was at an unhappy crossroads. A longtime magazine editor, she had left New York City to pursue a simpler life in her home state of Oregon, with the man she wanted to marry, and taken an appealing job at a Portland magazine. But neither job nor man delivered on her dreams, and in the span of a year, Camas was unemployed, on her own, with nothing to fall back on. She did know one thing: She no longer wanted to write about the genuine article, she wanted to be it.
So when a friend told her about Kate Hill, an American woman living in Gascony, France who ran a cooking school and took in strays in exchange for painting fences and making beds, it sounded like just what she needed. Upon her arrival, Kate introduced her to the Chapolard brothers, a family of Gascon pig farmers and butchers, who were willing to take Camas under their wing. The Chapolards inducted her into their way of life, which prizes pleasure, compassion, community, and authenticity above all else, forcing Camas to question everything she’d believed about life, death, and dinner.
It’s a story that takes her from an eye-opening stint in rural France where deep artisanal craft and whole-animal gastronomy thrive despite the rise of mass-scale agribusiness, back to a Portland in the throes of a food revolution, where Camas attempts—sometimes successfully, sometimes not—to translate much of this old-world craft and way of life into a new world setting. Along the way, Camas learns what it really means to pursue the real thing and dedicate your life to it.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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