On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome, with Love and Pasta

Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris

Ann Mah · 273 pages

When journalist Ann Mah’s diplomat husband is given a three-year assignment in Paris, Ann is overjoyed. A lifelong foodie and Francophile, she immediately begins plotting gastronomic adventures à deux. Then her husband is called away to Iraq on a year-long post—alone. Suddenly, Ann’s vision of a romantic sojourn in the City of Light is turned upside down. So, not unlike another diplomatic wife,

My Life in France

Julia Child, Alex Prud'Homme · 344 pages

Julia Child singlehandedly created a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the coun

A Year in Provence

Peter Mayle · 207 pages

In this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron with his wife and two large dogs. He endures January's frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glo

Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany

Bill Buford · 336 pages

Writer Buford's memoir of his headlong plunge into the life of a professional cook. Expanding on his award-winning New Yorker article, Buford gives us a chronicle of his experience as "slave" to Mario Batali in the kitchen of Batali's three-star New York restaurant, Babbo. He describes three frenetic years of trials and errors, disappointments and triumphs, as he worked his way up the Babbo ladder

Sushi and Beyond: One Family's Remarkable Journey Through the Greatest Food Nation on Earth

Michael Booth

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Michael Pollan · 450 pages

What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't—which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as

Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love

Simran Sethi · 350 pages

"Bread, Wine, and Chocolate, part journey to six continents in pursuit of delicious and endangered tastes, part investigation of the loss of biodiversity from soil to plate, tells the story of what we are losing, how we are losing it, and the inspiring people and places that are bringing back the foods we love. Award-winning journalist Simran Sethi travels from wild coffee forests in Ethiopian to

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Anthony Bourdain · 320 pages

A celebrity chef shares anecdotes of his experience in the restaurant industry, and of his journey from dishwasher to a position of fame in the food industry.

America the Edible: A Hungry History, From Sea to Dining Sea

Adam Richman · 271 pages

"The host of Travel Channel's most popular show explains how iconic American foods have captured our culinary imaginations. You won't look at a bagel the same way again! In America the Edible, Travel Channel host Adam Richman tackles the ins and outs of American cuisine, demonstrating his own unique brand of culinary anthropology. Believing that regional cuisine reveals far more than just our tas

Roadfood: The Coast-to-Coast Guide to 800 of the Best Barbecue Joints, Lobster Shacks, Ice Cream Parlors, Highway Diners, and Much, Much More

Jane Stern, Michael Stern · 569 pages

Gordon Ramsay's Uncharted: A Culinary Adventure With 60 Recipes From Around the Globe

Gordon Ramsay · 368 pages

Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil

Tom Mueller · 238 pages

For millennia, fresh olive oil has been one of life's necessities, not just as food but also as medicine, a beauty aid, and a vital element of religious ritual. Today's researchers are continuing to confirm the remarkable, life giving properties of true extra-virgin, and "extra-virgin Italian" has become the highest standard of quality. But what if this symbol of purity has become deeply corrupt?

American Terroir: Savoring the Flavors of Our Woods, Waters, and Fields

Rowan Jacobsen · 280 pages

"Why does honey from the tupelo-lined banks of the Apalachicola River have a kick of cinnamon unlike any other? Why is salmon from Alaska's Yukon River the richest in the world? Why does one underground cave in Greensboro, Vermont, produce many of the country's most intense cheeses? The answer is terroir (tare-WAHR), the "taste of place." Originally used by the French to describe the way local con

The Devil's Cup: Coffee, the Driving Force in History

Stewart Lee Allen · 240 pages

A self-appointed social anthropologist of coffee, Stewart Lee Allen has written the definitive account of caffeine's impact on humankind. Beginning in Ethiopia where he sails a dhow along the same route that carried the first beans to Yemen 1500 years ago, Allen literally travels the world on his mission to prove his theory that coffee is the driving force in history. Refreshingly lateral, superbl

Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste

Luke Barr · 320 pages

Uncorrected Proof - Not For Sale. NOTE: Chapters and narrative pages are numbered. Ditto NOTES AND SOURCES, BIBLIOGRAPHY AND INDEX. But no page numbers are shown in the TABLE OF CONTENTS.

The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food

Judith Jones · 297 pages

From the legendary editor who helped shape modern cookbook publishing-one of the food world's most admired figures-comes this evocative and inspiring memoir. Living in Paris after World War II, Jones broke free of bland American food and reveled in everyday French culinary delights. On returning to the States she published Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The rest is publishing a

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp, Camille Kingsolver · 384 pages

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat."As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begi

The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family

Laura Schenone · 352 pages

The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese

Michael Paterniti · 349 pages

In the picturesque village of Guzma n, Spain, in a cave on the edge of town, there is a cramped limestone chamber known as "the telling room." This is where villagers have gathered for centuries to share their stories and secrets--usually accompanied by copious amounts of wine. It was here, in the summer of 2000, that Michael Paterniti found himself listening to a Spanish cheesemaker as he spun an

As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto

Julia Child · 416 pages

From Here, You Can't See Paris: Seasons of a French Village and Its Restaurant

Michael S. Sanders · 344 pages

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing

Anya von Bremzen · 338 pages

Born in a surreal Moscow communal apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen, the author grew up singing odes to Lenin, black-marketeering Juicy Fruit gum at school, and longing for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, drab, naively joyous, melancholy and, finally, intolerable.

An Embarrassment of Mangoes: A Caribbean Interlude

Ann Vanderhoof · 320 pages

Under the Tuscan Sun meets the wide-open sea . . . An Embarrassment of Mangoes is a delicious chronicle of leaving the type-A lifestyle behind -- and discovering the seductive secrets of life in the Caribbean.Who hasn't fantasized about chucking the job, saying goodbye to the rat race, and escaping to some exotic destination in search of sun, sand, and a different way of life? Canadians Ann Vander

A Thousand Days In Venice

Marlena de Blasi · 272 pages